Sweet Revenge

“Don’t I—”

“No,” Jack said, cutting him off. “And you don’t want to.”

The bruiser likely heard threats all the time, but after looking at Jack for a second longer, he realized that Jack could actually make good on them. He stepped aside and let Jack and Eva enter.

A wall of shouts met them as soon as they stepped inside. Outside it had been cold enough to leave a crust of frost on puddles, but inside was hotter than Satan’s own chamber pot, and smelled as good, too. The air stank of sweat, tobacco, and cheap whiskey. At least a hundred men crowded around a ring that had been scratched in the dirt.

Within the ring, two men faced off. They’d stripped down to the waist, and their bodies glistened with sweat and blood as they circled each other, fists upraised. The eye of one of the fighters had swollen shut. The other looked like he favored one leg. Probably he’d taken a hit there—low blows were counted just as much as any other.

Swollen Eye danced forward, fists at the ready. He bobbed to one side as Hobbled swung a left hook, then he jabbed at Hobbled’s bad leg. His opponent sank down onto one knee. Swollen Eye darted closer and plowed his fist into Hobble’s jaw, sending the other man sprawling onto his back. The crowd roared in approval.

“They don’t follow the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules,” Eva called to him above the racket.

“Only rule is that you have to stop punching a man when he blacks out,” he answered. “And no knives in the ring.”

That didn’t stop fighters from trying to smuggle in weapons. Jack’s hair covered the scar he had on his left temple, a souvenir from a piece of pig iron one of his opponents had gripped in his fist. But the bugger hadn’t held on to his advantage for long. After he’d been cut, Jack had knocked the sod to the ground and ground his boot heel onto his opponent’s wrist, until his fingers had spasmed open and Jack had kicked the pig iron away.

Jack watched the fight now. Swollen Eye took advantage of Hobbled’s prone position, crouching over him and raining blows. Hobbled could barely lift his arms to protect himself as blood spurted. The crowd continued to cheer.

He glanced at Eva. The sight of blood was common here, and between that and the heat, he half expected her to look faint. Instead, she watched the fight with a frown of concentration. He should’ve known that the sight of two men pummeling each other into paste wouldn’t upset her.

Looking back to the ring, he noticed something. “The idiot’s lowering his guard,” he muttered to himself.

Swollen Eye, confident in his victory, dropped his hands to taunt his opponent. Hobbled managed to raise up just enough to throw a right jab. It crashed into Swollen Eye’s face. With a groan heard above the shouting, Swollen Eye toppled backward into the dirt. He didn’t move. Not even when three men scurried into the ring and slapped his face as they shouted at him.

Hobbled staggered to his feet. He waited as the three men continued to slap and yell at the downed fighter. Eventually, one of the men glanced over and shook his head. Hobbled grinned, showing big gaps in his teeth, and raised his hands in victory.

The throng watching the match bellowed its approval. As Swollen Eye’s limp body was dragged off by his friends, Hobbled limped around the ring, accepting the crowd’s tribute.

Hell, he remembered that. The flood of sound and praise that would wash over him as he stood with his arms lifted, spattered with the blood of his opponents. The spectators would roar at him, and he’d roar back. A bloodstained champion.

He caught Eva watching him. Saw the understanding in her eyes. For as long as a match lasted, he’d been a god. Something more than another piece of slum trash.

“You miss it,” she said.

“Not the bruises and broken bones, I don’t.” But they both knew that wasn’t the truth. “Come on, the next fight’s about to start and I want to find Charlie before then.”

She followed in his wake as he shoved through the crowd, clearing a path for her. “And Charlie is…?”

“Old friend of mine,” he said over his shoulder. “Bookmaker.”

“It’s only legal to gamble at racetracks.”

He threw her a dry look. “Because everything else here’s strictly aboveboard.”

A corner of her mouth turned up. “Right.”

“But Charlie’s more than a bookmaker. If there’s something you want or need, anything at all, Charlie can get it for you.”

As he pushed through the mob, he saw more than a few blokes give Eva the eye. She’d kept the hood of her cloak up, but women always snared attention at fights. Aside from her, only a handful of females were scattered through the crowd, and most of them looked like the sort who charged for their company.

Jack glared down anyone who gave Eva more than a passing look. Just let one of the bastards try anything. He hadn’t had a decent fight in a long while.

No one tried anything.

At one edge of the building, men gathered, shaking handfuls of money at someone standing in the middle of the circle. A voice rose up above the crowd. “It’s six to one for O’Connell. Twelve to one he knocks Arkley out in the first five rounds. What’ll it be, lads?”

There’d be no getting to Charlie until all the bets had been placed. Men surged forward, ready to have their wagers written down. This went on until someone beat a pipe against a metal bucket, signaling that the fight was about to start. The crowd around the bookmaker thinned as the spectators all turned toward the ring.

The bookmaker stood there, writing in a battered notebook and holding a huge fistful of banknotes. Even though she was dressed in a skirt, she also wore a shirtwaist, tie, and a man’s waistcoat. Her dark hair had been tucked up into a bowler hat, and she held a cigar between her teeth.

“Betting’s closed,” the bookmaker said as Jack stepped closer.

“What’re the odds you’ve got the clap?” Jack asked.

Her mouth dropped open as she looked up, and her cigar fell to the ground. “Diamond Jack!”

“Hello, Charlie,” he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“This is Charlie?” Eva demanded. She hated the shrill note in her voice, as if she were some melodrama heroine, but, damn it, Jack had caught her by surprise. She had to wonder if he’d done it on purpose, just to see her look shocked. No doubt her eyes were round as oranges and her mouth hung open.

“Charlotte Linton,” the bookmaker said with a cheerful grin, “but everyone round these parts calls me Charlie.” She appeared to be somewhere in her late thirties, possessing a sharp-edged attractiveness both at odds with and in perfect harmony with her rough surroundings.

The crowds cheered as two more men proceeded to pummel each other in the ring.

Charlie turned to Jack with an expression of stunned but pleased disbelief. “It’s really you, Diamond Jack?”

“Must be,” he answered, “because I’ve got on his trousers.”

The bookmaker threw back her head and laughed. Then grabbed Jack by his shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. Eva noted sourly that Jack enthusiastically returned the hug.

“Blimey and bloody hell,” Charlie cried, “it is you! Got bigger, though.” Pulling back, she gave his bicep an appreciative squeeze. Eva wanted to shove her to the ground. “Didn’t think it was possible. If we had weight classes here, you’d have been at the top.”

“Breaking rocks either wears a man down to a nub or builds him up,” he said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“Word was you got sent to the clink for trying to do in that toff.” Charlie used her thumb to tilt back her bowler hat. Eva would have thought the combination of men’s clothing with a woman’s skirt might appear silly, but Charlie looked raffish and daring, curse her. Eva never considered herself a particularly conventional woman, but standing next to Charlie made her feel like a vicar’s prim daughter.

“It was him that killed Edith,” Jack growled.

“So I heard,” Charlie said somberly, “and I’m right sorry about it. But I didn’t think they’d let you out of stir.”

“Let myself out,” Jack replied, and Charlie laughed again.

“’Course you did!” She punched him in the arm affably. “No sodding prison walls can hold Diamond Jack, the fighter with one of the best records in Bethnal Green.”

“His escape is not something we’d like to advertise,” Eva said through clenched teeth.

As if suddenly remembering that Eva stood watching the whole exchange, Charlie glanced at her. Taking in Eva’s deliberately drab cloak, Charlie said, “She don’t seem like your usual style of bird, Jack. Looks a bit frowzy.”

“I’m blending in with my surroundings,” Eva snapped. “And I’m not Jack’s bird.”

Charlie grinned. “Got a mouth on her, though.”

“Don’t I know it,” Jack said.

Eva fought to keep from ramming her knee into his groin. “The mouthy bird wants to know if Charlie’s going to help us or not.”

“That all depends,” Charlie answered. “What kind of help do you need?”

Jack stepped closer, and lowered his voice. “We need to steal a body.”

* * *

Charlie refused to leave until the boxing match had been concluded.

“There’s friendship and there’s business,” she said, watching the ring. “I got to earn my beer, too.”

Eva smothered her impatience as the pugilists fought. She’d never been to an underground boxing match, and if the circumstances weren’t so urgent, she could easily devote hours to studying the environment and the participants. London existed in countless variations at all times—a thousand cities that held the same space on the map. They lived side by side, and you could spend your whole life here without learning all the different Londons.

This London was brutal, vicious, yet pulsating with invisible energy. A masculine place, pared down to its elemental self, where men proved themselves by trouncing challengers in the most primal, unrefined way possible. It made perfect sense that this place, and others like it, had created Jack.

She’d no doubt that he could set foot in the ring right now and defeat anyone here. Including the other fighters—fierce-looking men lined up near the ring, shadowboxing or watching the current match. None of the fighters would make for pleasant company if encountered in a dark alley.

And Jack could thrash any of them.

Despite all her books, the many languages in which she could converse, her pride in her higher reasoning, the desire she felt for him was far from intellectual. Seeing him here, knowing that he once ruled this rough, wild place, kindled a hunger within her.

“None of these blighters could touch you,” Charlie said, echoing Eva’s thoughts. She shook her head mournfully as she watched the fighters swing at each other. “Wasn’t nobody better than Diamond Jack. Undefeated, you were. A bloody shame when you retired.”

“Couldn’t stay in the ring forever,” he answered. “The money was better being a bodyguard, and I didn’t get my nose broken every two weeks.”

“But you were the Leonardo da Vinci of brawling,” Charlie complained. “You don’t take da Vinci’s paintbrushes away just ’cos he hurts his pinkie finger.”

“Jack’s got more to offer than his fists,” Eva retorted.

Charlie sent her a cunning smirk. “Oh, I know that, darling.”

Would anyone notice if, in the middle of the fight, Eva hauled off and punched Charlie? Or would the crowd gather around and place bets?

“The match’s ending,” Jack said quickly.

He and Eva retreated to the edge of the building as Charlie settled with the bettors. Volumes of money changed hands with a speed that would shame the most experienced bank clerk. Despite the fact that Charlie was one woman amid a sea of men—some of them angry over the results of the fight—she looked comfortable, confident, laughing over bawdy jokes and shouting down anyone who complained about their bets. She seemed to know everyone, and they knew her. A woman like Charlie could be a valuable resource for Nemesis.

Eva would sooner chat with an adder than approach Charlie for information.

“Green’s a nice color on you,” Jack said, chuckling.

“I’m not jealous,” Eva answered at once. She had no right to that emotion, not where he was concerned. Yet acid seemed to be burning through her veins.

“A lot of time’s passed since me and Charlie.”

“You could take up with her again tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter,” she said airily.

His eyes narrowed as he gazed at her. “Didn’t figure you for a liar.”

The impulse to deny it gripped her. Yet he deserved far better than that. So did she, for that matter. “Perhaps I’m jealous,” she admitted, then added hastily, “But I’ve no right to be. It’s completely irrational.”

His gaze heated. “Nothing rational about you and me wanting each other. That don’t stop us, though.”

“No,” she said, “it doesn’t.” She wasn’t accustomed to feeling this strongly about anything besides her work—certainly no man ever engendered this kind of response. It was a strange vocabulary, this kind of emotion, one with no words, no logic or syntax. How could she make sense of it?

She couldn’t. The thought made her stomach clench.

Once her business concluded, Charlie drifted over toward Jack and Eva, meticulously counting a stack of pound notes. A family could live for a year on the money Charlie held, the take from a single night’s work. Compared to the wages she might make in a factory or some other drudge work, it was no surprise a woman as clever and ruthless as Charlie would turn to criminal employment.

Charlie stowed the wad of cash. She glanced toward the ring, where more fighters took their positions. A man with a scraggly mustache collected bets—where on earth did the spectators find so much money, when it was clear from their grimy, threadbare clothing that they hadn’t much to spare?

“You better be prepared to pay, and well,” Charlie said. She sighed, watching the mustached man collecting wagers. “I’m losing the best part of my night.”

“Can’t you consider it a favor to Jack?” Eva asked, irritated. “Being old friends.”

“Even old friends got to pay,” Charlie replied.

Eva’s mouth twisted. “Sentimentality doesn’t have a high value.”

“Not with me, it don’t.” Charlie peered at Jack. “You know how it is, don’t you, Diamond?”

He gave a fatalistic shrug. “Nothing’s changed around here. But I’m short on funds right now. I’ll have to owe you, Charlie.”

The bookmaker grinned in a way Eva didn’t like at all. “Owing me is a recipe for trouble.”

“I’ll be sure you’re amply compensated,” Eva said tightly. Nemesis didn’t have a large budget—they pooled their funds from their sundry other employment—but if paying Charlie out of her own pocket kept Jack out of the bookmaker’s debt, Eva would gladly shoulder the cost. “The night’s moving quickly, so let’s get to business.”

“Normally I take all payment in advance,” Charlie drawled. “Given that Jack’s an old chum of mine, I’m willing to wait for the sake of—what’s the word you used?—sentimentality.”

“What a sterling example of benevolence,” Eva growled under her breath as Charlie led them out of the building.

The bookmaker picked her way through the yard full of detritus and debris, with Jack and Eva following. Jack kept his gaze moving and vigilant.

“Can we trust her?” Eva asked in a low voice.

“No,” he said without hesitation. “But Charlie’s the best. Anything you want, she can get. No questions asked.”

What had Charlie procured for Jack? “That must come in handy.”

“I ain’t going to tell her about Nemesis,” he said, frowning, “if that’s what’s got you fretting.”

They left the yard and trailed after Charlie through thick shadows congealed between ramshackle structures.

Eva whispered. “It’s you I’m concerned about. She could turn you in for a reward.”

“Only thing Charlie won’t do is rat someone out. Murder’s out, too,” he added.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said tartly.

Jack glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “So, you’re worried about me.”

She didn’t miss the faint, very faint, note of hope in his voice. How many people had ever felt genuine concern for him? He’d been alone, reliant on no one, for most of his life. For all her parents’ preoccupation with helping others, she’d always known that they cared for her. Loved her.

Had Jack’s sister loved him? Had she fussed over his bruises from the boxing ring? Or had he sat wearily on the edge of his bed and held a compress to his battered body, because no one else had been there to do it for him?

“I…” She forced the words out, words she wanted to hold close for her own protection. Yet he needed them. “I am concerned about you.”

Even with the darkness heavy around them, she could see the look of wonderment on his face. A fissure spread through her heart. God, he’d had so little.

He stopped walking and turned to her, his expression turning fierce. “Eva—”

“Lively, you two!” Charlie called over her shoulder.

They continued their trek, leaving behind the twisted, gloomy streets of Bethnal Green and heading southwest, toward the river. The neighborhoods through which they passed were marginally better, with fewer people aimlessly wandering the streets, and stained brick buildings lit by gas lamps.

“Oi,” Charlie hissed as they hurried down a block. “Coppers patrolling.”

True to her word, patrolmen’s lamps appeared at the end of street. Charlie slipped into a narrow alley soundlessly. Eva did the same, forcing herself to ignore the stench of rotting cabbage wafting from the alley’s recesses. For a moment, Jack eyed the tight, dark space warily. Given his experience with dark, confining places, his reluctance was understandable. But the police neared.

Grabbing Jack’s hand, Eva tugged him into the alley. They pushed farther back into the alley and hunkered behind a pile of discarded mattresses. The smell emanating from the mattresses was even worse than rotting cabbage—and she didn’t want to know why.

She held her breath as she heard the patrolmen’s footsteps on the pavement. With his escape from prison, Jack was already a wanted man. Now that Rockley had framed Jack for Gilling’s murder, the Metropolitan Police would be eager for Jack’s arrest.

The patrolmen walked past the alley, their lamps sweeping across. Jack’s breathing became ragged. Crouched behind him, Eva placed her hand between his shoulder blades, silently willing him to be calm. A reminder that she was with him. Seconds later, tension lessened in his muscles and his breathing evened.

The beams of the police lanterns pierced the alley’s darkness. She kept her head down, praying that Charlie and Jack did the same. An eternity passed.

Finally, after she had aged fifty years, the police moved on.

She wouldn’t exhale, or breathe at all if she could help it, until the patrolmen were long gone. After their footsteps faded and several more minutes elapsed, she, Jack, and Charlie stumbled out of the alley, all of them gasping and coughing to clear their lungs.

Jack looked ashen, his knuckles white where he gripped the strap of his pack. The confined space had taken its toll on him.

Smiling, she took his hand and nodded toward the alley. “We ought to swap Simon’s mattress out for one of those.”

As she’d hoped, Jack chuckled, the pallor fading from his cheeks.

Turning, Eva discovered Charlie watching them curiously, as though they were a pair of cats who’d suddenly begun playing dice—entirely unexpected.

Eva tilted up her chin in wordless challenge. With a shrug, Charlie resumed striding down the street, and Eva and Jack followed.

The heavy smell of river water slunk through the air as they neared the Thames. A two-story official-looking building crouched a block from the Embankment, its columns and pediments streaked with soot. Spiked iron fencing encircled the structure, though the building itself was so gloomy and imposing, it seemed unlikely that anyone would fight to get inside. Only one light burned in an upper window.

Rather than lead them toward the main entrance, Charlie skirted around the building until she came to a side basement entry. She scraped her nails down the metal door.

Jack shifted restlessly beside Eva as they waited. She kept herself tense and waiting, alert should Charlie lead them into a trap.

Clanging like a knolling bell, the door opened and revealed a sallow man in a gray, baggy suit. His thin hair clung to his skull. He glanced first at Jack and Eva, wariness in his sunken eyes, then at Charlie with a dim flare of recognition.

“Charlie,” he intoned.

“Evening, Tiffield,” she answered briskly. “We’ve come to do a bit of shopping.”

The sallow man held the door open, and their party trooped inside. They found themselves standing in a long, tiled hallway, a few lamps burning dimly. The night had been chill, but within the building, it was even colder. A sweet, rank smell combined with the acrid scent of chemicals.

Tiffield unlocked another metal door and waved them in. Silently, they entered a dark, windowless chamber, and here the smell became stronger. Tiffield turned on the lamps.

No mistaking the contents—or rather, occupants—of the chamber. Rows of tables were covered with heavy waxed cloth, human bodies forming distinctive shapes beneath the fabric. There had to be at least three dozen corpses in here.

A morgue. Charlie had taken them “shopping” at the morgue.

“Looking for something in particular?” Tiffield asked with the same bored intonation as a shop clerk.

Charlie looked expectantly at Jack. Eva half expected the bookmaker to say, “Tell the man what you want, Jack.”

“A bloke about my size,” he answered. “Even better if he’s got dark hair and eyes.”

Scratching the skin behind his ear, the morgue attendant considered this for a moment. “May have a few who fit the bill.” Tiffield muttered to himself as he walked between the rows of cadavers.

“You all right?” Jack asked Eva quietly as they trailed after the morgue attendant.

“Perfectly,” she said. Though that wasn’t entirely true. She was no stranger to death, but she’d never been surrounded by its presence like this.

He looked concerned, yet didn’t press, for which she was grateful. He seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what she needed. The more someone coddled her, the more she struggled, their concern feeling like a pair of hands closing around her neck. But Jack let her breathe.

Tiffield stopped beside a table and, without preamble, flipped back the covering to reveal a body. “How about this one?”

“Seems a bit scrawny to me,” Charlie said critically.

“Hair color’s not right, either,” Jack noted.

“That can be dyed,” the morgue attendant suggested.

Eva pressed her fingertips to her mouth to hold back an inappropriate giggle. A dead man—someone with a whole history, a life now gone—lay in front of them, and they spoke as if discussing the suitability of a sofa. She’d thought herself hardened by her work with Nemesis, but clearly there was more for her to learn.

“Got anything else?” Charlie asked.

Tiffield flicked the cover back over the corpse and moved farther through the rows of bodies. The procedure was repeated as he uncovered another cadaver, and Charlie and Jack debated over its merits.

“This one’s throat is all torn up,” Jack complained.

“Got it cut over a woman,” Tiffield explained. “She didn’t come to claim ’im, though.”

“We need something with not too many visible wounds,” said Jack.

The morgue attendant heaved a sigh. “Sure got a lot of requirements.”

“It’s important,” Eva said dryly.

Tiffield covered the body and moved on to another. He pulled back the cloth, revealing the corpse beneath. “This here chap might suit. Come in earlier tonight. Was a bully for a bawdy house who got pushed down some stairs by a customer that argued the price. Snapped the bully’s neck. Think of it, a big bruiser like this gets done in by a man half his size.” Tiffield shook his head. “Ain’t no logic.”

The dead man had no argument for the morgue attendant. Whoever he was, whatever his name, he did closely match Jack’s size and build. It made Eva shiver, to see someone so like Jack stretched out in the indifference of death, his strength now utterly gone. To reassure herself that Jack was very much alive and strong as ever, she glanced up at him as he studied the body. He must have been entertaining similar thoughts, for his gaze was shadowed.

“Dark hair,” Charlie noted. “That’s good. But the mustache’s got to go.”

“Think there’s a razor somewhere about,” Tiffield said.

Without inflection, Jack said, “Go get it.”

The morgue attendant took a step, then asked, “You sure this is the one you want?”

“He’ll do,” Jack answered.

Tiffield scurried away, presumably to find shaving implements.

“Won’t someone notice if a body’s missing?” Eva asked.

“Not these lads.” Charlie waved an unconcerned hand at the rows of covered corpses. “No one comes to claim ’em, and the police don’t care about some dead—what’s the word?—reprobate. They’re unwanted.”

It seemed London was full of superfluous men.

“A hard world, this,” Jack murmured. His gaze met hers over the body. It was clear they thought the same thing—it could just have easily been him upon the table, unclaimed, growing colder, with no one to mourn his passing.

I would, she told him silently. For whatever solace it brings you, I would find the loss of you to be a hard burden.

Perhaps it was enough. She couldn’t know, but there was some satisfaction in his eyes, dark as darkest night.

She realized suddenly that there would come a time when she would lose him. When the mission was over, he couldn’t stay in England. He’d have to start his life over, somewhere far away. And she could never leave Nemesis—their work meant too much to her. Which meant that someday, if the mission was successful, she and Jack would never see each other again. The thought hollowed her.

Bustling in with a cup of foam and a razor, the morgue attendant set to work shaving the corpse’s face. “I ain’t a mortician,” he grumbled, “making a body pretty for a funeral.” Yet Tiffield didn’t stop in his task.

Once the dead man had been shaved, Jack produced a bundle of clothing from the pack he carried and tossed them toward Tiffield.

“Put those on him,” Jack said.

The morgue attendant studied the wad of garments. “They look just like your clothes.”

“Never you mind that,” Charlie snapped. “Just get the stiff dressed.”

Tiffield complained under his breath again, but pulled the garments onto the cadaver. Eva winced at the rough, impersonal way the morgue attendant handled the body, as if it were nothing more than a haunch of meat at Smithfield Market. Her one consolation was that rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in.

“There,” Tiffield announced. “All nice and handsome for you.”

“Needs one more thing,” Charlie said. From a pocket in her skirt she produced a flask, and splashed strong-smelling whiskey across the body’s chest and face. “Now he ain’t dead, just dead drunk.”

Though the words felt odd and sour in her mouth, Eva asked, “How much do we pay you for the … body?”

Tiffield started to speak, glanced at Charlie, then stopped. After a moment, he said, “Nothing.”

Eva looked back and forth between the morgue attendant and Charlie. Clearly, Tiffield was in some kind of debt to the bookmaker, but whether it was a financial debt or another kind of obligation, Eva wasn’t certain—nor did she want to know. The many faces of London were often ugly, and possessing a certain amount of believable deniability often worked in one’s favor.

Before Tiffield could change his mind, Jack hefted the body onto his back. “Blimey, he’s a heavy bugger,” he said through gritted teeth.

“We weighed him yesterday,” the morgue attendant said. “Over sixteen stone.”

“Me, too,” Jack muttered.

“Got to go now, Tiffield,” Charlie announced. “Standard terms apply.”

“I know” was the sullen answer. “I never saw you. I don’t remember anything.”

Charlie strode to Tiffield and patted his face. “Good lad.”

The woman could give lessons in sheer audacity, Eva decided.

In short order, they were back outside. Eva breathed out in relief to be away from so many corpses, but her sigh was short-lived as she pointedly remembered the dead man Jack carried. She, Jack, and Charlie gathered far away from incriminating light.

“Where do we send payment?” she asked Charlie.

“Don’t trouble yourself about it,” the bookmaker answered.

“I don’t carry debts,” Jack growled. “Tell me what I owe, and it’ll get paid.”

Charlie’s smile was singularly ominous. “Sorry, ducks. The where, when, and what—that’s up to me to decide.” Cheerfully, she said, “Good to see you out of the clink, Jack. And it’s been a pleasure, Miss Prim,” she added with a wink. “Have a charming evening.”

Before Eva could object to her unflattering sobriquet, Charlie seemed to melt into the shadows. One moment she was there. The next, nothing. Eva strained to hear even the lightest footstep on the pavement. But Charlie had vanished.

Eva wasn’t sorry to see her go.

Grunting, Jack shifted beneath the weight of the body. “Feels like I’m carrying my own corpse.”

“You are.” Despite her cavalier words, she felt all too aware of the similarities between him and the dead man.

Jack snorted. “What do the toffs say? Indubitably. Now let’s go get me killed.”

* * *

The gaming club was the sort of place gentlemen liked to frequent. It trod the line between seedy and smart that seemed to draw well-heeled blokes by the cartload. Not quite as elegant as the clubs of St. James’s, not as unsavory as the dens clustered near Covent Garden. Jack knew from experience that the club kept a few girls upstairs, but for the most part the men came to play cards and roulette, drink too much and laugh too loud.

Rockley was inside. He came here every Thursday, but just to be certain, he checked the mews behind the club and saw the bastard’s carriage. The hour approached four, when Rockley usually left and headed home to sleep the sleep of the conscienceless. Eva was in place. All Jack had to do now was wait in the shadows across the street.

Except he’d done far too much waiting in the past, and it scratched him now. If everything went well in the next few minutes, he’d be that much closer to finally gaining vengeance. If everything didn’t go well, tomorrow Tiffield would be showing off his corpse to some new interested buyer.

A sick despair climbed up his throat, and he spat upon the ground to rid himself of it. Now wasn’t the time to think about the shortness of his life, or how he’d leave this world without a soul to care whether he was alive or taking up space in the city morgue.

No, that wasn’t true. There was Eva. He’d seen how she had looked at him back in that place of death. As if he mattered to her. More than a pawn in Nemesis’s game. More than a former brawler, failed murderer, and escaped convict.

New energy moved through him. Like he used to before a fight, he danced lightly on the balls of his feet, shaking out his arms, stretching his neck. He had to succeed. He’d never lost a match back when he was a boxer. He wouldn’t take a dive or lose this one.

He kept himself loose, even when the clock struck four and Rockley’s carriage drove up to the front. The bastard himself emerged from the club, gleaming in his evening clothes. His bodyguard took the lead, scanning up and down the street, then giving Rockley a nod that everything was clear. Rockley moved toward his waiting carriage.

Now.

Jack darted out from the shadows with a burst of speed. He ran in front of the club, close enough for Rockley and his bodyguard to see him but not close enough to be within decent firing range. His legs burned with the urge to carry him to Rockley, not past him. Maybe he could try it. Maybe he could be fast enough to smash the son of a bitch’s head against the stone steps before his bodyguard could shoot.

No—he had to stick with the plan. He halted in the middle of the street and stared at Rockley. The bastard had to see him in order for the scheme to work.

Rockley looked at him. Jack looked back. A distance of only twenty feet separated them.

For a moment, time shuddered to a stop. The street fell away, the club, the whole sodding city.

Jack hadn’t been this close to him in years. He’d aged a little—more lines fanned around his eyes and a few bracketed his mouth—and wrinkles in his evening clothes revealed it had been a long night.

Rockley’s eyes widened when he saw Jack. And Jack had to pretend that he was just as surprised to be spotted—as though he’d been spying on Rockley and had been accidentally caught while trying to slip away.

Despite his plan to simply be seen and then run away, Jack snarled, “Filthy murderer. I’m still going to make you pay.”

Rockley’s shock vanished, replaced by a look of bitterest hate. “Trash is all you are, Dalton. All you will ever be. You cannot touch me.”

“Don’t want to touch you,” Jack spat. “Just kill you.” His feet carried him closer, his hands already curving to wrap around Rockley’s throat.

Rockley paled and took a step back. He smacked his silver-topped walking stick against his bodyguard’s arm. “You idiot,” he growled. “Take care of him!”

Ballard shook his head like he was rattling his thoughts straight. Then reached into his jacket and pulled out a big, mean pistol.

Thoughts of crushing Rockley’s windpipe scattered as soon as Jack saw the gun. Right. The plan.

Time to go.

He ran. Speeding down the dark, empty street, he listened to make sure the bodyguard followed. There. The tread of thick boots—like his—on the pavement. Ballard ran with the grace of a heavy wagon. Instinct shouted to run as fast as possible, lose the thug in the maze of streets leading toward the river. Instead, Jack paused at an intersection, waiting for Ballard to catch sight of him.

The bodyguard shouted, “Oi!” He leveled his pistol.

Jack ducked as a shot rang out. The bullet slammed into the wall behind him.

Cursing at his missed shot, Ballard rushed toward Jack. Jack spun around and ran. After waiting and watching for so long, and not having enough action, it felt almost good to throw himself into this chase, his blood pumping, his body moving.

There, just up ahead, he spotted the Embankment. If he ran straight toward it, he’d corner himself. If he turned down this alley, he could shake off Ballard.

He headed to the river. It was a thick, black snake twisting in front of him, a few small wherries bobbing over its surface.

At the edge of the Embankment, Jack spun around to face the approaching bodyguard.

Ballard’s steps slowed as he got Jack in his sights. He lifted his gun. “Diamond Jack Dalton,” he jeered. “You ain’t so grand. I’m protecting his lordship now.”

“You’ll be pulling his knife out of your back soon,” Jack said. “Unless you wise up. But maybe you can’t wise up. Maybe you’re too sodding stupid.”

Ballard sneered. “I ain’t the one who went and cornered myself.” He pointed his revolver. Cocked the hammer.

Jack’s heart slammed inside his chest as he waited. This had to be perfectly timed. Wait. Wait.

The gun fired. Three times.

Jack toppled backward into the water. The river closed around him, dark and heavy as death.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

From her position a hundred feet down the Embankment, Eva stiffened when she heard the shots, then the splash of a person falling into the river. Did someone cry out? Had Jack been hit?

She peered down into the black water, straining for any sight of him. Her arms wrapped about her waist, tight, as if to hold herself back from jumping into the river and searching for him. Vile as the Thames was, she’d readily swim it to find him and end the doubt that clutched at her stomach. But she couldn’t. She had to stand here in the shadows, her only company a corpse that eerily resembled Jack, and wait.

God—it had been too long. “Where is he?” she muttered. A hundred fears assailed her with their sharp, poisoned claws.

A darker shape appeared in the water. The chains around her stomach eased, then she growled in frustration. Only a large river rat swimming through the refuse that floated atop the Thames.

Then—something broke the surface, gasping. It moved toward the bank.

She threw off her cloak and hurried down the waterman’s steps leading to the river. A man swam toward her. Jack. He didn’t appear to be injured, either. Thank God. Relief robbed her of breath, as though a fist squeezed her lungs.

Dropping to her knees, she reached out, grasping his arms, and attempted to haul him out of the river. She panted with the effort. He did indeed weigh sixteen stone, if not more. Both she and Jack struggled to get him onto the shore. Finally, with a heave and groan, he pushed himself out of the water.

She fell backward, with him sprawled atop her. Long moments passed as they lay like this, him huge and wet, gasping, with enough presence of mind to brace himself on his elbows so his full weight didn’t crush her. The front of her dress was instantly soaked, and clung to her damply. The chill water smelled dank and fetid, but she hardly noticed the scent.

He was on her, his legs between hers, their bodies pressed close. His clothes were plastered to him, and with her own sticking to her skin, she felt everywhere the movement of his muscles, his raw animal strength. Their hearts seemed to be battering their way toward each other. His heat burned away the river’s chill.

They stared at each other, both still panting, their breath mingling, intimate as a confession. Hardly any light reached the riverbank, yet she was powerfully aware of the darkness and ferocity of his eyes, the hard contours of his face. His curved lips, so close to hers.

Pinned as she was beneath him, she could hardly move, yet didn’t want to. Not when he lowered his head just as she raised hers, and their mouths found each other.

Heat and hunger. It felt as though it had been years, not days, since last they kissed. Ravening need tore through her, its edge whetted by the press of his massive body, his demanding mouth. For all that they lay upon a grimy, wet slab of stone beside a musty river, she knew only his taste, his feel. The unfettered power of Jack.

She ought to have been terrified or intimidated. He was so much bigger than her, so phenomenally strong. Yet desire made her strong, too, every bit his equal. She squirmed her hands free and wove her fingers into his wet hair. A low, deep rumble resonated from his chest and into her.

Yet he pulled away with a feral sound. He rolled onto his back, leaving her wet and chilled. They both lay there, panting, staring up at the night sky dulled by clouds, listening to the slap of the water against the stone landing. She risked a look at his groin. His cock was clearly outlined through his damp clothes, and she tucked her hands beneath her to keep from reaching for him.

He laid his arm over his eyes, his hand clenched into a fist. “Bloody buggering hell,” he said roughly.

“Exactly,” she answered.

It would be easy to blame their kiss on the excitement and uncertainty of the night, but she’d been on assignments equally exciting and uncertain with other Nemesis agents. She hadn’t clawed hungrily at any of them afterward. Only Jack roused this mad need, this loss of control.

She struggled upright, her body feeling oddly heavier without him atop her.

“It worked, then,” she said.

“Rockley saw me, his man gave chase, and I made sure he thought he plugged me. I heard him on the edge of the Embankment, looking to see if I surfaced. So I floated like a corpse for a minute—out of shooting distance—before sinking down again.” He grunted as he rose to standing. Wincing, he adjusted his cock, and her cheeks heated at the matter-of-fact way he handled himself. A sudden image of him with his cock in his hand made her mouth dry, her breasts feel tight and sensitive. Did he ever do that? Touch himself in the middle of the night? And did he think of her when he did it?

God, she might lose consciousness if she considered it.

She started to rise. He stuck out his broad hand, offering assistance. Normally, she refused such gestures from men, but she couldn’t seem to pass up any opportunity to touch him. She slid her much smaller hand into his, shivering at the sensation of his rough palm against hers. As easily as he might heft a puff of milkweed, he pulled her to her feet.

“You’re all wet,” he said, staring at the front of her dress. His gaze avidly took in how the fabric molded to her body, her breasts and hips.

“Because of you.”

A hot light burned in his eyes. She was certain that same light burned in hers. But there was more to do this night, and she needed her wits. She turned away.

Good Lord, there was a corpse at the top of the waterman’s steps, not fifteen feet away, and she’d been writhing around with Jack, not even caring. He was an opiate.

“Dawn’s nearly here,” she said.

He shook himself like a dog, scattering water, then pushed his wet hair out of his face. “Let’s finish this job.”

They climbed up the slick stairs, his boots squishing with each step. It struck her then how dangerous his part had been tonight. He could just as easily have drowned in the perilous river as been hit by a bullet.

At the top of the stairs, the body waited for them, sprawled upon the ground. The night was cool, but not as cold as it had been in the morgue. Decay would set in soon, and rigor mortis.

“Give me your gun.” Jack held out his hand.

“I’ve shot it before,” she objected. “I’ve even hit people.”

“Shooting a dead man’s a nasty business, and I don’t want you doing it.”

She considered holding on to her revolver, then, sighing, passed the weapon to him. “The bodyguard shot three times.”

“Lost count on my way into the water.” He stood beside the body, cocked the gun’s hammer, and pressed the muzzle to the corpse’s chest.

“Wait!”

Frowning, he lowered the gun. “What?”

She gathered up her cloak, forming it into a bundle. “Put this over the muzzle. It ought to dampen the sound.”

“It’ll ruin your cloak.”

What an odd streak of consideration he possessed. “Need a new one, anyway.”

He did as she suggested, placing the bunched-up cloak between the gun and the body. “Sorry, mate,” he said to the corpse. Then he fired. He put one more bullet into the cadaver’s torso.

“Three shots,” she reminded him.

“I’m going to get him in the face so he’s harder to identify.” He sent her an apologetic look. “It’ll be messy.”

“Do whatever you have to.” Despite her bravado, she shut her eyes when he fired the last shot.

“Keep ’em closed,” he advised.

Though she didn’t quite take his advice, she kept her gaze on the toes of her boots while he picked up the body. From the corner of her eye, she saw him go back down the waterman’s steps, then heave the body into the river.

“All right, love,” he said, after coming back up the steps. “It’s done.” At least he didn’t chide her for not looking.

They both watched as the body drifted out farther into the water, then sank from view.

“Whoever he was,” she murmured, “I hope he absolves us.”

Jack turned away from the river. “That’s the problem with the dead. When we need their forgiveness, only thing they got for us is silence.”

The sun broke over the eastern horizon, spreading light like an illness. Eva and Jack began the long walk back to headquarters as London woke.

* * *

Jack studied his face in the cracked mirror as he ran the razor along his jaw. It wasn’t a pretty face, never had been, and he hadn’t been living a life of ease and luxury. Even when he scraped away the last of his stubble, he still looked rough and mean. The sort of man who’d once dominated underground boxing matches, dealing out vicious beatings on a weekly basis, and taking his share of punches, too. Who could shoot a corpse point-blank without a blotch on his conscience.

He’d fallen into bed with the first rays of dawn and slept deeply. His dreams had been only of Eva, and the depraved, filthy things he’d like to do with her.

Bending over his washbasin, he splashed water on his face, rinsing off the shaving soap. Didn’t some faiths believe you could just have a priest or preacher dunk you in water and you were reborn, clean down to your very soul? Religion never called to him, not when he was too busy trying to survive this life to think about the next one, but right now the idea of starting over, utterly spotless, was a tempting thought.

The door to his room opened. Eva stepped inside, her face shuttered. His back was to her, but he could see her in the mirror above the basin.

Her gaze moved over him, hot and quick. All he wore was his unbuttoned shirt and trousers, his braces hanging down. In the mirror, he watched her watching him, how her look caught on the span of his bared chest, then moved lower, lingering over his arse and down his legs. All the way to his bare feet, which made him feel oddly exposed. Big feet, he had, and hairy. More proof he was a brute, not a nice man.

But what she saw pleased her. She looked at him as if he were a sweet she wanted to suck on. He went iron-hard in an instant.

She shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Turning, he pressed a towel to his face to dry himself. Her gaze flicked back down to his chest, then farther south. When she saw how her study of his body affected him, her cheeks turned pink—and not from embarrassment.

He didn’t care that he could hear the other Nemesis folk downstairs, talking and going about their daily lives. He didn’t care that it was broad daylight. Only thing he did care about was getting Eva in his bed. His bed that was only steps away.

He started toward her. As he did, her expression went distant again and she held something out. A newspaper. It had been opened and folded to show one of the inner pages.

Taking it, he scanned the paper. It was easier for him to read when he said the words aloud, so he did, though he struggled over some of the longer words. “‘The body of infamous criminal and escaped prisoner Jack Dalton was pulled from the Thames today. Though the corpse was somewhat disfigured by his injuries as well as his immersion in the river, he has been positively identified by authorities. The discovery of Dalton’s body comes as a considerable relief following his murder of John Gilling, barrister.’”

There was more, but he’d read all he needed.

It had worked. The world believed him dead. Rockley must think he was dead, too. The police would’ve told him straightaway.

Jack was free.

For some reason, it became important for him to carefully refold the newspaper, then set it on his washstand. His body felt strange, awkward, as though it belonged to someone else, and he tugged on strings to make the limbs move.

“Where will you go now?” Eva asked. Her voice seemed to come from far away.

“Go?” he repeated. He faced her.

She paced to the window and stared out at the yard. “We’ve got no leverage over you anymore. Nothing can keep you here, short of force.” She drew her finger down the dusty windowpane, leaving behind a bar of clean glass.

“Maybe Nemesis doesn’t need me anymore.”

“I—we do. You still know more than any of us about Rockley’s habits, his movements.”

“So I’m still useful,” he said.

“We need you more than you need us,” she continued in that strange, toneless voice. “I’m sure Rockley’s lightened his security. That was the point of last night’s endeavor. It would be fairly straightforward for you to extract your revenge upon him. The kind of revenge you’ve wanted since the beginning.”

He stared at her back, the line of her neck, and the shapes of her shoulder blades beneath her dress. A slim woman, but a fortress. “He’d be dead, but that wouldn’t help Miss Jones get her life back.”

Eva turned her head, showing him the line of her profile. “Miss Jones never meant anything to you.”

“Maybe not at the beginning.” He took a step toward her. “But I’ve been thinking it’s her I’m doing this for. I didn’t help Edith, but I can help Miss Jones. She’s what’s keeping me here.”

“Miss Jones,” Eva said, finally turning to face him. “You care about her?”

“What if I do?” he fired back. “Think a thug like me can’t care about someone?”

“I know you can,” she said quietly.

His heart beat hard within his chest as he stared at her. Sunlight poured into his room, uncovering everything. Brightness everywhere. It caught in the honey tumble of her hair and amber of her eyes, those damn shrewd eyes that saw too much but maybe not enough. He knew the sharp beauty of her face like he knew the shape of his own dreams.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” he said, low.

“For Miss Jones.”

“Does it matter why?”

She stepped nearer, until only a few inches were between them. Reaching out, she pressed her palm against his chest. Her touch was fire and frost, tearing through him.

“No,” she said after a moment. Then raised herself up on her toes and kissed him.

He’d grown addicted to her kisses, how they revealed her true self—not controlled and calculating, but wild and hungry. Unrestrained. Her kisses spoke to the animal in him. He growled now, pulling her close.

He slicked his tongue into her mouth, and she opened even more to him. She tasted sweet, but he wasn’t fooled. She was spice, too. The kind that robbed him of his wits. He’d do anything to have her taste, to feel her. If she kissed him like this, taking and giving, whatever she asked of him, he’d do it.

Wait …

He broke the kiss. His hands went to her shoulders, holding her away from him.

Her eyes blinked open, convincingly glazed.

“Don’t,” he rumbled. When she frowned, as if confused, he said, “You don’t need to gull me like this to keep me around.”

Her expression changed. From muddled with desire to confusion, and then to fury. She twisted away from his grasp.

“I was wrong,” she said angrily. “Here I’d been defending your intelligence to everyone, but it turns out you’re the world’s biggest imbecile.”

Before he could speak, she pulled open the door so hard it bounced against the wall, then stormed from the room. She ignored the other Nemesis members asking her if she was all right, then slammed the front door behind her.

Seconds later, Simon raced up the stairs and into Jack’s room. Grabbing a fistful of Jack’s shirt, he snarled, “What the hell did you do?”

Jack felt his mouth curl. “Remember how I said I can read? Turns out I can’t.” A bitter laugh scraped his throat. “Not a damn word.”

* * *

From the shadows across the street, Eva and Jack watched the front of Mrs. Arram’s brothel. It was a slow night, for they’d been keeping vigil for the past half hour and not a single customer had knocked on the front door.

“The hell is everybody?” Jack muttered.

“Perhaps the gentlemen of London have suddenly developed an attack of morality,” she answered.

His snort of disbelief indicated just how much he thought that was likely.

They fell back into strained silence. She burned with impatience to just stride up the walkway to the brothel’s door and barge her way in. Yet they couldn’t approach until they were certain that the security had been lightened.

Fortunately, keeping an eye on the brothel meant she didn’t have to speak much. She wasn’t certain she could say anything to Jack that wouldn’t sound angry or reveal how his suspicion had cut her deeply. She couldn’t give him that power. At all times, she must protect herself. His accusation had only reinforced this belief. A moment’s vulnerability left her with a raw, red wound. She’d not be so foolish again.

“Eva—” he began, then stopped as a carriage appeared on the street and stopped outside Mrs. Arram’s.

An unknown man stepped down from the carriage and, after glancing up and down the street, approached the brothel. Judging by his hat and the cut of his suit, he was some sort of prosperous banker. Using his walking stick, he knocked lightly on the door. It opened almost immediately.

Eva sighed with satisfaction. Only one bully guarded the door now, not two. Security had indeed been reduced since the last time. Jack’s “death” had served its purpose.

The bully spoke with the customer for a moment before stepping aside to allow him inside.

After the door had closed again, Eva fussed with her clothing, making certain that she looked tidy and presentable. She tugged on her gloves and adjusted the veil on her hat. Satisfied, she turned to Jack and smoothed down the lapel of his coat. He held himself motionless.

Her hand stopped in the middle of her attentions. What the hell was she doing? Fussing over him like the attentive wife she was about to impersonate?

She turned away. “Time to get our evidence.”

They crossed the street and, with his hand on her elbow, walked up the path to the front door. Her heart set up a fast rhythm. Anger, anticipation, Jack’s nearness and touch—they all combined within her. As they mounted the steps, she forced herself to take deep, regular breaths. She couldn’t let her inner turmoil affect the mission.

Once they stood before the door, Jack exhaled and stretched his neck from side to side, as though readying himself for a fight. Despite his respectable checked suit and slicked-back hair, he still resembled the brawler he had been. She didn’t want to take pleasure in the way he easily inhabited his size and strength, or the gleam of determination in his eyes, or a thousand other details that called out for her admiration. But what she wanted and what she actually did were very different things.

“Ready, missus?” he asked her.

It troubled her how much she liked hearing him call her that, especially after what he’d said earlier. “Get on with it.”

He sent her an inscrutable look, then knocked. As it had before, the door opened. The bully stood there, a large man with a face that appeared as though it had been on the receiving end of a concrete slab.

“Yeah?” the bully demanded.

“We’re here for the strawberries,” Jack said.

The bully narrowed his tiny eyes as he looked back and forth between Jack and Eva. He looked hard at Jack, then paused to study her. She offered him her best uncertain smile, just the sort a woman might bestow when stepping into unknown territory. As much reassuring herself as whoever looked at her.

Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, for the bully stepped back and held the door open. “Awright. Go on to the parlor an’ have a chat with the lady of the house.”

She and Jack moved into the foyer. It resembled the foyer of any successful businessman’s home, complete with umbrella stand, large mahogany coat rack, and vases of fresh greenery. Piano music and the trill of women’s voices floated down the hall. A central staircase led to two more stories—presumably where the girls did their work. Somewhere in this building was Rockley’s private room, and in that room they’d find his strongbox containing the evidence of his crimes.

“Parlor’s that way,” the bully said, motioning down the hall.

She and Jack exchanged a look. They could try to make a break for it right now, but that would bring the whole house down on their heads. Security may have been lightened, yet it still existed. Other guards were posted throughout the brothel. Better to try to get as far in as possible without struggle.

They were taking a chance, bringing Jack here rather than Simon or Marco. As Rockley’s former bodyguard, he might be recognized, but he knew the layout of the brothel. He also knew how the bullies would fight, if it came to that. She hoped that it didn’t.

Together, they walked down the carpeted hall and arrived at the parlor. The place still resembled a businessman’s home—dark furniture, floral wallpaper, and overstuffed chairs and sofas—except lounging on the furniture were nearly a dozen girls in robes and negligees. Three of the young women played cards, another yawned into her hand. A girl sat on a man’s lap, idly toying with his mustache. In the corner, a young woman with dyed red hair played an upright piano. It was dispiriting how good a musician she was. Eva could easily guess that she’d been some clerk’s daughter who’d been modestly educated in music, painting, and French, but some fall from grace had led her to this place.

Difficult to ascertain their age with the amount of paint they wore, though some couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

An older woman in burgundy silk approached, smiling. “Welcome, sir, and”—she glanced at Eva—“madam.”

Eva dropped her gaze, as if embarrassed.

“How might we gratify you this evening?” Mrs. Arram sounded halfway between a procuress and a grandmother offering tea and biscuits.

Though Jack had doubtless been in many brothels, he looked suitably abashed. “The wife and me, we were, ah, thinking maybe…” He chuckled nervously.

“Of course!” Mrs. Arram said to Eva, “We’ve only girls here, madam. Were you interested in watching, or were you considering a more participatory role? Or,” she added, “did you and your husband want an audience? There’s a wonderful room with plenty of hidden vantage points. A girl could be in the room with you, too, watching. Whatever you desire.”

For a moment, Eva found herself at a loss for words. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jack redden.

She was seized by a rather wicked impulse. “Perhaps we could find a girl for me, and my husband could watch?”

He made a strangled sound, and she smiled inwardly.

“That could easily be arranged,” Mrs. Arram said. “We have many fine girls…” Her words trailed off as she looked at Jack with a frown.

It was only a moment, an expression so quick and fleeting as to be nearly unseen. But Eva saw it. The smallest widening of Mrs. Arram’s eyes.

Jack and Eva exchanged glances. He understood.

“Let me ring for Genevieve,” the madam continued, cheerful. She strolled toward a bell pull. “She’s just the girl for you.”

“Don’t,” Eva said, darting forward. But too late. Mrs. Arram lunged for the bell pull and tugged on it.

A door concealed within the wall’s paneling swung open and a hulking man with thinning hair barreled into the room. He stalked toward Jack. “Lady of the house wants you out,” he said, with a bored tone of voice that spoke to the number of times he’d been called upon to roust unruly customers.

But he’d never dealt with a customer like Jack. Thinning Hair reached for him, and Jack immediately plowed his fist square into the bully’s chest. His would-be assailant staggered back, gasping.

Screaming, the prostitutes leaped up from their seats. The lone customer in the parlor unceremoniously threw the girl in his lap to the floor as he jumped to his feet. He darted out the side door without a backward glance.

“Behind you,” Eva called to Jack as the smashed-faced bully from the front door came thundering into the room. Smashed Face brandished a heavy cudgel and saw immediately that Jack was the threat.

“It’s Diamond Jack Dalton!” the madam screeched.

Both guards’ faces briefly paled with fear as they realized whom they confronted. Eva had known Jack possessed a reputation, but she hadn’t understood its true scope until that moment. These two paid thugs, both clearly hardened criminals, were frightened of him.

But they were rough men, too, and their fear turned to rage. Thinning Hair pulled a knife from a sheath on the back of his belt. Snarling, he waved it at Jack.

Eva stepped forward, intending to help Jack with his two opponents, but saw the madam reaching into the drawer of a table. Metal glinted. A gun. Before Mrs. Arram could pull out the pistol, Eva drove her fist into the woman’s face. The madam went down noiselessly, dropping the gun. The weapon skittered under a heavy cabinet.

In a flurry of lace and perfume, the girls in the parlor fled, shrieking like terrified parrots.

Whirling around, Eva saw Smashed Face charge Jack. The bully swung his club. Fast as fire, Jack lashed out, grabbing hold of Smashed Face’s wrist and preventing the bully’s strike from connecting. Jack seized hold of the other end of the club. Using his hold on the bully’s wrist, he flung Smashed Face to the ground. Smashed Face grunted as he went down hard, and Jack twisted the club out of his hand.

Armed with the cudgel, Jack faced off against Thinning Hair. The bully slashed at him with his knife, gaslight gleaming lewdly off the blade. Jack parried the blows, holding his assailant back with swings of the cudgel. Back and forth, they traded feints and strikes. Eva longed to run to his aid, but if she tried to insert herself into the fray, she’d only distract Jack and likely get them both hurt in the process.

And to watch him fight like this, tough and dirty, mesmerized her. He had a natural skill, an innate understanding of when the next strike might be coming, and he battled back with a street-born warrior’s grace. There were no civilized rules, no gentlemanly principles at play. He only meant to hurt his opponents, by any means.

Thinning Hair took a step back, pushed away by Jack’s assault. But Smashed Face was getting to his feet, preparing to join the fight.

“Jack!” Eva called in warning.

He acted so quickly, so fluidly, she barely discerned the movement. Hardly a moment after Thinning Hair slashed at him, Jack struck the bully’s leading shoulder with the cudgel. In nearly the same motion, he kicked Smashed Face in the chest. The power of Jack’s kick sent the bully careening backward. His head slammed into a heavy wooden side table. Groaning, Smashed Face fell to the ground. His eyes rolled back as he lost consciousness.

Jack didn’t spare the insensate man another thought. He turned back to Thinning Hair, grinning viciously. Seeing his colleague sprawled oblivious on the floor stoked the bully’s fury. He slashed upward with his knife. Jack dodged the strike, then brought his cudgel down on Thinning Hair’s wrist. A sickening crunch filled the parlor, and the bully screamed. The knife dropped from his hand.

Jack smashed his fist into the bully’s jaw. For a moment, Thinning Hair fluttered his eyes like a parody of a coquette. Then he crumpled to the floor, out cold.

Spinning around, Jack readied himself for another assault. But none came.

“That’s the lot of them,” Eva said.

“There’ll be more.” He glanced at the madam, lying across the carpet, then at Eva. His grin returned, a flash of white teeth that, combined with his fighter’s stance, made her pulse kick.

She had to keep her head on straight. She was still angry with him, and they had to find the evidence. “Now where?”

“Rockley’s private room is at the top. Whatever we’re looking for, it’ll be up there.”

She started toward the door to the parlor, but as she passed, he gripped her elbow, stopping her.

Nodding toward the side door, he said, “That leads to the servants’ stairs. Faster.”

She nodded and waved for him to lead the way. Only minutes earlier, the parlor had been filled with feminine chatter and the melodic strains of a Schubert waltz. Now it was silent and empty, save for the three unconscious people splayed upon the floor. Eva smiled to herself. Nemesis had been here.

No—Nemesis couldn’t take credit for the force of nature that was Jack Dalton.

She followed him through a narrow servants’ hallway. A few frightened maids peered out from doorways before slamming them in terror. They’d been too well trained to go to the police for assistance. Then she and Jack arrived at the steep, cramped stairwell reserved for servants. He bounded up them, continuing to hold the cudgel. Her own revolver was still in her handbag, but only as an eleventh-hour resource. Firearms in enclosed spaces were extremely dangerous—they had a habit of hitting the wrong people, or being wrenched out of one’s hand. Her gun would stay in its secure place unless absolutely necessary.

As soon as they reached the second-floor landing, the door there burst open. Another bully charged into the stairwell, armed with a heavy pipe.

At once, Jack and the guard swung at each other. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, and Eva winced as the pipe connected with Jack’s shoulder. He only grunted. He moved to strike at the bully with his cudgel, but the stairwell was too narrow to get a decent swing. He dropped the club and gripped the bully by his lapels, then hit his head against the wall. The guard’s head was thick, however, and the strike didn’t knock him out. He dropped his own weapon and also grabbed Jack by the lapels. Pushing away from the wall, the bully slammed Jack against the stair’s railing, the banister driving right into the small of his back. He pounded Jack against the rail once more, forcing a pained groan from Jack. He struggled to keep from being thrown over the banister onto the steep stairs below.

Eva dropped to the ground, fumbling between the men’s heavy boots as they fought. There! Her fingers closed around the pipe.

She rose up behind the bully, then brought the pipe down onto the base of his skull. The guard made a gurgling sound before sinking to the floor. Jack caught himself before he toppled backward, his hands gripping the railing. Once he’d righted himself, he bent over the slumped bully, his ear to the man’s mouth.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

Jack straightened. “He’ll want to make friends with a bottle or ten of whiskey when he wakes up.” Eyeing the pipe in her hand, he said, “Should consider myself lucky you didn’t do anything like that to me.”

She hefted her acquired weapon. “It’s early yet.”

A corner of his mouth curved up. “Will I get any warning?”

In response, she waved toward the stairs. “Keep climbing, and find out.”

He nodded and started up the next flight, with her following. Either he was foolish, or he truly did trust her. And Jack was no fool.

But they still had farther to go, with a fight every step of the way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The commotion roused the rest of the house. As Eva and Jack continued to ascend the servants’ stairs, she could hear women’s panicked voices and irritated and alarmed men hurrying out. No one wanted to stay in a brothel under siege.

At the very top of the stairs stood a baize-lined door. Cautiously, Jack eased it open, holding his body in readiness if another bully tried to attack. All they found was an empty carpeted hallway. As they stepped into the corridor, it was eerily silent. Two doors faced each other across the passage. Presumably, one of the doors led to Rockley’s private chamber, and in that chamber was the evidence.

But where was the guard? Surely there had to be one. Even with Jack supposedly dead, a man as paranoid as Rockley wouldn’t leave dangerous documents unprotected.

Jack nodded toward one of the doors. He placed his finger against his lips. She nodded in understanding.

They edged beside the doorway, backs to the wall. Jack stuck his foot out and pressed down on the floorboards directly in front of the door. The floorboards obligingly creaked beneath his weight.

From within Rockley’s private room, four gunshots rang out, bullets flying through the door. Splinters flew. Eva flattened herself tight to the wall to keep from being hit by both the shattered wood and the bullets.

Then more silence. The guard inside waited.

Jack tensed, readying himself to storm into the chamber. She stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed. “You killed ’im! You killed the madman!”

The door slowly creaked open. Leading with the gun in his hand, the guard poked his head out. Jack struck instantly, grabbing the bully’s hand and slamming it into the door frame. The guard’s hand opened with a pained spasm, and the gun dropped from his grip. Eva lunged for the gun just as Jack shoved the guard back into the chamber.

She caught the pistol before it hit the ground.

A tremendous crash sounded from inside Rockley’s chamber. Inside, she found Jack and the guard furiously trading punches. This guard was just as big as Jack, just as brutal a fighter. The two men threw vicious blows, pummeling each other as if they were in a Bethnal Green brawl rather than an elegantly furnished bedroom in St. John’s Wood. She immediately discarded the idea of taking a shot—with the two men locked in combat, she ran the risk of hitting Jack rather than the bully. But she kept the gun, just in case Jack got himself into a tight situation.

She had to make use of the time he was buying her. Dodging the men as they threw each other into walls and furniture, she checked under the four-poster bed and behind the framed paintings. No sign of a strongbox or vault.

She tugged open a dresser’s drawers and dumped their contents on the ground. Bile rose in her throat as floggers and restraints tumbled over the carpet. She had a feeling that Rockley wielded rather than received the flogger. And he’d never consent to be restrained.

Eva jumped aside as Jack and the guard crashed into the dresser. The sound of breaking wood filled the room as the dresser broke apart beneath their weight. Neither of the men seemed to notice. They hauled themselves to their feet and resumed fighting. Blood dripped from the corner of Jack’s mouth, and the guard’s eye had already begun to swell shut. Yet they didn’t slow or stagger as they brawled.

At this rate, they’d tear the house down around them before she could find the evidence.

“Damn,” she muttered to herself, glancing around the chamber. “Where the hell is it?”

Her gaze caught on a small door that presumably led to a closet. Flinging it open, she found several men’s jackets hanging there. Useless. But on the floor of the closet …

There sat an iron strongbox, roughly the size of a traveling valise. Two locks secured its lid, and handles were on either end of the strongbox, making it relatively easy to transport. But the strongbox wouldn’t be traveling anywhere in a hurry—a locked chain secured it to a metal ring mounted to the wall.

She crouched down and removed her lock picks from her handbag.

Fire suddenly spread across her scalp as someone gripped her roughly by the hair and jerked her back. “You ain’t getting in there,” snarled the guard.

Her eyes burned, and her hand came up automatically, grasping her own hair to lessen the force of his tugging. Twisting around, she jabbed the fingers of her free hand into his unprotected windpipe as he bent over her. He gagged and his grip on her hair lessened. She kicked at his knees at the same moment she brought the side of her hand down onto his forearm.

Howling in pain, he released her. And then he wasn’t there anymore. Jack slammed into the guard, tackling him to the ground. Jack pinned the bully’s arms with his knees as he knelt over him. If Jack had been fighting viciously before, he was rage personified now, his face dark with fury as he landed blow after blow to the guard’s face.

Though the sight was brutally fascinating, she had her own task to accomplish. She turned back to the lock fastening the chain to the strongbox. Forcing herself to ignore the wet, crunching sounds of Jack’s fists pounding into the bully, she worked her picks on the lock. She’d never before had to pick a lock when someone in the same room was administering a relentless beating, and she strained to sense the tiny clicks and barely perceptible movements of the lock’s mechanism as Jack unleashed the full extent of his fury on the guard.

The man’s groans stopped, but Jack’s assault didn’t. She glanced over her shoulder. The bully was unconscious, blood flowing from his nose and mouth. But Jack kept going.

“Jack,” she said sharply. “He stopped fighting back.”

Snarling, Jack whipped up his head. The moment his gaze fell on her, the mask of rage fell away.

“Don’t add murder to your list of crimes,” she said.

“He … hurt you.” His words were a low rasp.

“I hurt him back.”

His scowl slowly faded. “So you did.”

“Now stop distracting me.” She turned back to her work, fighting for calm when she felt anything but. He’d been on the verge of killing the bully, and all because the guard had tried to harm her. He’d been callously efficient when fighting with the other guards, but this had been personal.

The lock’s tumblers clicked into place. She unfastened it, separating the strongbox from the chain that bound it to the wall. Her arms strained with effort as she struggled to pull the heavy container out of the closet. It might be the size of a valise, but it was far heavier, as though someone had packed the case with bricks instead of clothing.

“I’ll see to that.” Jack grabbed the strongbox’s handles and hefted it easily.

Getting to her feet, she said, “Now you’re just showing off.”

He started to grin, but winced from the cut at the corner of his mouth. “I want a look at what we’ve got on Rockley, but we ain’t opening this here.”

“A neighbor may have notified the constabulary,” she said in agreement. “Between the gunfire and this”—she gestured at the ruined bedchamber, where every single piece of furniture had been destroyed by Jack and the bully—“we’ve made enough noise to summon the entire Metropolitan Police. The army, too.”

She stepped around the prostrate form of the guard, and together she and Jack left the bedroom. They hurried down the main stairs, Jack in the lead as he carried the strongbox. The house stood silent. Either everyone had fled, or the women cowered in their rooms.

Eva and Jack reached the ground floor. The front door was only steps away. But as they crossed the foyer, Smashed Face charged. Jack didn’t slow his steps. He swung the strongbox at the attacking guard. The metal container caught the bully right in his gut. He grunted and careened backward, gagging. As she and Jack sped through the front door, the bully didn’t try to stop them.

They hastened out into the street. Whistles and the clanging bell of the Black Maria police wagon broke through the night’s silence. She and Jack ran in the opposite direction, toward the hansom they’d hired for the night. The cab waited for them in an alley, and moments after they’d clambered into the vehicle, the strongbox settled across Jack’s knees, the driver snapped the reins and they were off. If anyone looked askance at a woman riding in a hansom, Eva didn’t give a damn.

She’d just stormed into a brothel to steal incriminating evidence from an embezzling nobleman. Reputations were just bits of tissue paper in comparison.

She didn’t relax against the seat until they were well out of St. John’s Wood, with no sounds of pursuit. Only then did she give a long, slow exhale.

Jack’s smile flashed in the darkness. “Haven’t had that much fun since all three O’Leary brothers challenged me in the ring.“

Given what she’d just witnessed at the brothel, she had no doubt how that fight had concluded.

“It’s serious business, what we do for Nemesis,” she answered. Then grinned. “But that was fun.” She couldn’t admit that to anyone—except Jack. Yet the excitement of what they’d just done continued to course through her.

“Could use a pint after a dustup like that,” he said with a grin.

“Me, too,” she said, wistful. But there’d be no drinks until after they reached headquarters.

“We could share a pint or two at the pub.” His expression sobered. “What I said before, about you trying to gull me—”

Her mood plummeted. She glanced away. “Don’t.”

He put his fingers on her chin and turned her to face him. Rough, the pads of his fingertips against her skin, and his eyes were dark as mystery, filled with fire. Heat settled low in her belly.

“Goddamn it,” he rumbled. “Listen. I’m … sorry about what I said.” He shook his head. “Where I’m from, ain’t no one as ruthless and manipulative than women. Men got nothing on them. But the women, they have to survive, any way they can. That’s what I know.”

“I’m not like them,” she said tightly.

“You ain’t like any woman I’ve met,” he answered, heated.

His gaze searched her face, and she marveled at the contrast between the man who’d relentlessly cut through the guards at the brothel and this man, who looked at her with desire and admiration. Yet they were the same man. Brutal but honorable in his way. Capable of base violence and fierce emotion. Including the emotion he felt for her.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I oughtn’t have said that to you, and I hate that I did.”

She clasped his wrist and leaned closer. Then kissed him. Because she had to. Because every part of her wanted it, wanted him. She tasted his blood in the kiss, metallic and earthy.

His grip on her chin tightened, and his growl traveled from deep in his throat into her with low, dark reverberations.

“You’re like no one I’ve ever known, either,” she whispered against his mouth.

“A pair of rare birds we are,” he agreed. “Not birds—wolves. Rare wolves.”

She glanced down at the strongbox. “Wolves who are in possession of dangerous, perhaps even ruinous, information.”

Both his eyes and teeth gleamed in the shadows. “A wolf’s got to have fangs.”

* * *

At Nemesis headquarters, no one wanted to wait until morning to open the strongbox. Everyone gathered around Eva as she sat at the parlor table, using her picks to open the two hefty locks securing the strongbox’s lid.

Jack leaned against the wall, holding a damp cloth to his busted lip, watching. Impatience burned at him to see what, if anything, the coffer held—but he didn’t want to be one more body breathing down Eva’s neck as she worked.

It was a damned pretty neck, though. What he wouldn’t give for a proper time and place to run his mouth over it, breathe in its scent. But proper times and places were in bloody short supply.

All he could do was wait and seethe, slowly torn apart by his hunger for Eva and his need to learn what was in the coffer.

Could be that the strongbox contained nothing more than a few dirty French photographs or letters from mistresses. If that was true, then everything he and Eva had done was for nothing, and they’d be no closer to destroying Rockley than they’d been at the beginning. No—they’d be worse off, because they had nothing to hold over the bastard, their hand played.

He wasn’t the only impatient one.

“Give us a go at that,” Marco urged. “I cracked the Turkish embassy’s safe in Paris in less than three minutes.”

“If you’d stop chattering at me,” she said without looking up, “I’d get this done much faster.”

“Shut it and let the lady work,” Jack snapped.

Marco scowled at him, but at least he stopped talking.

Finally, the telltale snick of the locks opening sounded in the quiet room. Everyone crowded closer to the table, Jack included, as Eva opened the lid. Tension was sharp and tight when she held up what was inside.

Stacks of paper.

“What are they?” Harriet demanded.

Eva sorted through them. “A list of London’s most elite courtesans, and their even more elite clients.”

Simon plucked that sheet of paper from her fingers. “Top-ranking ministers, heads of major corporations, bishops.” He whistled. “This could wreak considerable damage if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“’Course that’s why Rockley has it,” Jack muttered. “Anyone tries to make a move against him, and he’s got ’em by the stones.”

Eva held up two official-looking documents. “Deeds. One to a property here in London—a town house in Knightsbridge by the looks of it—and a house in Somerset.” She studied them closer. “The name of the deed holder has been left blank.”

“He must’ve swindled them from someone,” Lazarus suggested.

“It’s a veritable trove of villainy,” Harriet said, shaking her head.

Jack clamped down on his edginess. “None of this’s what we’re looking for.”

More silence as Eva rifled through the papers. It seemed Rockley had gotten involved in a sodding heap of crime, or at least liked to hang on to evidence of other people’s offenses for his own use.

It took them nearly half an hour to go through all the documents, sorting them, studying them.

Finally, Eva said, “Yes. This.” She untied a cord binding a set of papers. It appeared to be columns of numbers, with notations scribbled beside the figures.

“Is that it?” Simon demanded.

“A full accounting of the government contract for the cartridges.” She scanned the documents and muttered a curse. “That son of a bitch. He and Gilling took more than half the money allocated for the production of the cartridges. Rockley got the lion’s share, but Gilling made a profit, too. With the rest, they purchased substandard manufacturing materials from foreign suppliers. Bills of sale, as proof.” She pointed to several sheets of paper.

Simon examined the bills, and his upper-class features twisted with a snarl. “He fucking sold out British soldiers. How many men died because of him?” He flung the papers onto the table. “I’ll kill him.”

Jack smiled grimly. At last the toff understood the fury and need for vengeance that ate at him. “Get in the queue, mate.”

Slowly, Eva got to her feet. She gathered all the papers and set them back in the strongbox. “No one’s killing anyone. We’ve got the evidence we need against him, and we’re going to make use of it. He will be made to pay for his misconduct.”

He bristled. “You sound so bloody calm about it.”

“I’m feeling anything but tranquil,” she answered, meeting his gaze. In the lamplight, she looked carved from golden marble. It was the coolness, he realized, she used to shield herself, a kind of armor she made with her mind. The more the world threatened to shatter apart, the calmer she became. “He’s kept a good record of his crimes—and there are many. When it comes time to lead the charge against him, I’ll be right there, sword in hand.”

Her voice was flat, detached, but he understood now. He saw it in her eyes, and could feel it in the fury that turned her so perfectly still—when it came time for Eva to unleash the fierceness within herself, God help whoever stood in her way.

And damn him if he didn’t want to be there to see it.

* * *

Returning to her simple, ordinary rooms after the events of the night felt as though she were visiting someone else’s life. And she was—except the life she visited was her own. There, on her table, were lesson plans and books. There, propped upon the mantel was a photograph of her parents that had come in their last letter. Unsurprisingly, her father and mother looked stern and righteous as they posed outside the school they had built in the depths of Nigeria.

Their letter, penned by her mother, was tucked into the top drawer of Eva’s nightstand. Once again, her mother had urged her to join them, to give up tutoring for a higher calling. Your talents are too exceptional to be wasted on the bored daughters of the bourgeoisie, Elizabeth Warrick had written. There is a young missionary here who is in search of a wife and helpmeet. I should be very happy to pass along your permission for him to write to you. Use your life for some greater purpose.

Eva hadn’t yet replied to the letter.

Clad now in her nightgown but unable to sleep, she strode to her desk, preparing to finally answer. Yet before she wrote a single line, she flung her pen to the desk and leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling.

What would she tell them? How could she describe her and Jack storming into a brothel to steal documents belonging to a corrupt nobleman? And what would she say about Jack, the escaped convict who fought like a brute but had a soul of incomparable depth. And the way he kissed her … heat streaked through her, simply remembering the feel of his lips against hers, how he seemed to breathe her in, taking her into himself as though she were a vital part of him he couldn’t survive without.

She’d hated having to leave him at headquarters an hour ago. She wanted him here, with her. In her bed. But with all of Nemesis watching, she couldn’t very well take him by the hand and lead him out the door. They’d question her judgment—Simon most of all—in entangling herself with Jack whilst in the middle of a mission. She questioned her judgment, too. There wasn’t anything wise or careful about wanting him. And she had ever been wise and careful.

She started at the sound of a tap on her window. A dark shape loomed there. Grabbing her pistol, she edged closer. Perhaps Rockley had been able to find her and send one of his thugs in pursuit. Her rooms were on the top floor of her building—whoever it was had skill in climbing.

A face appeared in the window. Jack.

Exhaling raggedly, she moved to the casement and unfastened the lock. As soon as she slid open the window, Jack climbed inside with that surprising agility given his size. She stepped back to give him room.

He’d found some dark clothing, and with his black hair and stubble-shadowed jaw, he appeared to be the night come to life. She’d never seen such fire in his eyes. In her tidy little rooms, he looked big, dangerous—irresistible.

His gaze flicked down to the gun still in her hand. “Reminds me of the first time I met you.”

Turning away, she set the pistol on a nearby table. “I usually don’t receive visitors at this hour. Especially not at the window.”

She tried for flippancy, a final measure of self-protection, but even to her own ears she sounded breathless. No need to ask him how he’d gotten here. He already knew how to escape from headquarters without being seen, and he knew where she lived. He didn’t have any money, but she could well imagine him running through the streets, dark as the shadows themselves. Intent on one purpose—her.

He came up behind her. She didn’t hear him move, but felt him there, the warmth of his body, the hot intensity of his presence. His skin and clothing carried the scent of cool night air. Already her flesh became tight, achingly sensitive, her body reacting to his nearness alone. Yet she couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t face him. Not much frightened her, but he did. No, not him, but the way she responded to him, the way he made her feel.

They both knew why he was here in her rooms. She ought to demand that he leave. Threaten him with the gun if he didn’t. But she couldn’t do that. She wanted him here, so badly that she was rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but look at her pistol on the table and listen to the sounds of their roughened breathing.

The floorboards creaked beneath him. He’d done that deliberately. Giving her time to choose. Move away or stay.

She stayed.

He stood directly behind her, his heat seeping into her body, yet they didn’t touch. She heard the slight shift of his clothing as he moved. She braced herself, expecting him to be rough and urgent.

Instead, his large hand slid slowly, deliberately up her back. From the small of her back all the way along her spine, tracing her shape, until his palm rested just beneath her nape. She gasped at the sensation, as though his touch were flame.

He tugged her robe down her shoulders and she helped push it to the ground. Then he repeated his touch along her back, with only the thin cotton of her nightgown separating her flesh from his, and her gasp turned into a moan. His palm moved along her shoulders, her arms, as if learning her. When he stroked along the curves of her buttocks, he rumbled.

“I knew it,” he said, his breath on her neck. “Knew you’d have the sweetest round arse. Wanted my hands on it since the beginning.”

She exhaled a laugh. Leave it to Jack to speak only the earthiest of poetry. And it aroused her, far more than pretty metaphors or lyrical praise.

Deliberately, she took a step back, bringing their bodies together. His chest against her back. Her buttocks against his groin. Despite his clothing, she felt the shape of his hard, thick cock as it nestled against her. An animal growl escaped him.

His hands curved over her ribs, then up. She held herself in eager anticipation as she waited, waited, and then, oh yes, his hands covered her breasts. For a moment, he simply held her, as though reveling in the sensation of her breasts in his hands, but his stillness didn’t last long. He cupped her, stroked her, arousing her nipples into stiff points. When he pinched them, his teeth raked her neck.

Arching her back, she couldn’t stop her moan. The sensation of his teeth and fingers shot through her, gathering hotly between her legs.

She twisted her head to the side. “Kiss me, damn it.”

He chuckled quietly, then took her lips. Openmouthed, they kissed, ravenous, as he continued to caress and stroke her breasts.

She needed more, of him, his touch and hunger. She fumbled with the buttons lining the front of her nightgown, her fingers shaking, but she managed to undo them to her waist. The fabric gaped open.

Clever as she’d always known him to be, he took the invitation for what it was, peeling back the cotton to bare her breasts. Then they were in his hands, his incredible, big hands that were callused and not at all refined, and she seemed to spin away, lost in the feel of him touching her this way, skin to skin. He rolled her nipples between his fingers and caught her gasp in his mouth.

One of his hands drifted from her breast, moving down her torso over the curve of her stomach. Then he gathered up the hem of her nightgown and stroked between her legs. A cry broke from her at his intimate touch.

“God,” he rasped in approval, “you’re so goddamn wet.” His fingers slipped between her folds, sliding over her soaked flesh. When he rubbed her clit in slow, deliberate circles, pleasure clawed through her. She had to lean against him or else slide to the floor.

He worked her like this, one hand caressing her breast, the other stroking between her legs, and his mouth on hers, swallowing her every moan and whimper. She never thought a man like him could be this way, commanding and tender, touching her as though they belonged to each other and this was only right, only proper.

He slid a thick finger inside her and at once her body tightened, readying itself for release.

But then he took his finger away, and she cried out in protest.

When he spun her around to face him, his face was carved, brutal with desire. He kissed her, hard, then said, “The first time you come, it’ll be with my mouth on you.”

Her face flamed, while another heat poured through her. She started toward the bed, but he scooped her up in his arms with shocking ease. Instead of taking her to bed, he strode to the table and sat her down upon the edge. When he knelt down before her, her heart beat thickly in her chest and breath became scarce.

She stared down at him, so impossibly big, kneeling yet far from subservient. They both held power. Never had she felt stronger than at that moment, seeing the hunger and need in his gaze and the rigid line of his jaw. For her. All for her.

He stroked up her thighs, pushing her nightgown back. Revealing her legs and then—

“Ah, there it is,” he rumbled. He teased her pussy with his fingers, and his eyes blazed. “Know how many nights I’ve thought of nothing but this? How much I’ve wanted to taste you? This gorgeous cunt. My tongue on your pretty quim, eating you up.”

“I’ve wanted that, too,” she gasped.

“Hell.” One hand he used to continue to stroke her, the other flew to the buttons of his trousers. She watched, fascinated, as he tore them open and pulled out his cock. It was huge and dark and beautiful, straining upward in a thick curve. He pumped it as he caressed her.

The vision of his broad length in his own hand as he knelt between her legs—she nearly climaxed from the sight alone. And when he bent his head to her, and licked her in one long, slow stroke, she had to bite down on her lip to keep from screaming.

He feasted on her, licking, tracing her with his supple tongue. She draped her thighs over the unbending breadth of his shoulders. Sounds of approval and pleasure rumbled from him. He took her clit between his lips and sucked.

She bowed upward, no longer able to hold back her climax. It was a tightening and a release, as expansive and devastating as time itself. And endless. For he continued to lick and taste her, taking her to ecstasy too many times for her to count. She knew only the feel of him and how he drank of her with a brutal reverence.

She kept her eyes open, watching him, his mouth on her, his hand on his cock. She clutched the back of his head with one hand, and the other she used to stroke and rub her nipples.

He pulled back enough to say hoarsely, “You hide this, don’t you? Won’t show anyone what you’re really like. How wild you are. How hot you burn.”

“Not with you,” she moaned. “Can’t hide…”

“That’s right.” His voice was deep, unyielding. “Only I get to see this.” He licked her again, and another climax shuddered through her.

“Enough,” she said when she could speak again. She pushed him back, and his eyes blazed.

“We ain’t done,” he growled.

“We surely aren’t.” She pointed to the bed. “Take off your clothes and lie there.”

His eyebrows rose at her imperious tone, but he did as she commanded. He stood and stripped off his clothing, flinging everything aside with flattering haste. His coat, waistcoat, shirt. Trousers and boots. Then he was naked. Standing in the middle of her rooms completely nude.

She’d seen him without his clothes once before, but they had been in a dark carriage, and she hadn’t had the luxury of time and light to truly look at him. Now she had both, and what she saw filled her with raw, female need.

His every muscle stood out in hard relief, from the round caps of his shoulders to the planes of his chest and down to the sharp delineations of his abdomen. He was everywhere muscled—arms, thighs, calves—and he was wondrous and stunning and not a little frightening. Without his clothing, he became the most primal essence of masculinity, timeless and potent.

As he turned to kick aside his clothes, she saw his back. Scars traversed it, the thick indelible mark of the lash. Her heart contracted.

He turned back to her, and her gaze followed the line of his hip as it arrowed down to his groin. His cock stood at full attention and seemed to twitch beneath her perusal.

He took a step toward her, but she pointed once more at the bed. “Go on,” she commanded.

He shot her a look that seemed to indicate he didn’t appreciate being ordered about, yet he moved fast enough, climbing onto her bed. As he did so, she took a selfish moment to admire the flex of his firm buttocks. The springs creaked and the mattress sagged beneath his weight. There was a very good chance they’d break her bed tonight. She didn’t care in the slightest.

“Bed’s too damned small to lie down,” he said.

“Sit at the edge.”

When he did so, and looked at her expectantly, she pulled off her nightgown and tossed it onto a nearby chair. He growled in response.

“Better not turn down the lights,” he said, staring at her, “because I’ve waited too long to see you like this.”

“I’ve wanted to be seen.”

She let him look his fill, reveling in the way he drank her in with his eyes. He was a man, so of course his gaze lingered on her breasts and between her legs, but he also traced the lengths of her arms, her legs, even taking note of her bare toes.

But there was only so much admiration from a distance either of them could stand.

“If you don’t bloody get over here, right now,” he said, “I’m coming to get you.”

“I don’t like being ordered around, either,” she answered.

She sauntered toward him, feeling the sway of her hips, the measure of her own power. And the way he watched her, as though she contained every answer to every mystery, filled her with strength.

His hands curved over her hips when she stood between his legs. Leaning forward, he nuzzled her breasts, the bristle of his jaw deliciously abrasive against her skin. He ran his tongue around her nipples, alternating between them, and she threaded her fingers into his hair, holding him close. More heat spiraled through her—feeling him, seeing him.

Reaching down, she grasped his cock. He rumbled against her breast as she encircled him. He was iron-hard, filling her hand. She stroked the wide head, down the shaft, then back up, lightly raking her nails over him. Sharply, he inhaled, his hips rising up. Ah, he liked that. So she did it again, punctuating her strokes with careful scrapes up his shaft.

His hand clamped down over hers. “Have to stop,” he grated. “Or I’ll go off in your hand.”

She smiled wickedly. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I would, damn it. Enough talk—need to be inside you.” He pulled her closer.

As he sat on the edge of the bed, his hands on her hips, she straddled him, her legs wrapping around his waist. Their bodies pressed close, and they both groaned at the feel of his chest against her breasts, his flat abdomen and rigid cock tight to the curve of her stomach. She didn’t take him within her, not yet. For a lifetime it seemed she had waited for this, and she wouldn’t rush.

Canting her hips, she guided his cock between her folds. Up and down she moved, sliding him along her lips, over her clit, coating him with her wetness. Exquisite sensation flooded her to feel him like this, to watch the agonized pleasure on his face as she deliberately tortured them both.

“Ah, God, Eva,” he gasped. “That’s … God…” Yet even as they both shook with pleasure, he had reached his breaking point. Hands almost cruel on her hips, he lifted her up, notched his cock at her opening, then brought her down, surging into her.

She cried out.

Instantly, he stilled. “Hurting you?”

“I only need … a moment.” He was huge within her, stretching her to her utmost. Thank heavens she was soaking wet, for she doubted she would’ve been able to accommodate him otherwise. She breathed deep, willing her body to relax. In a moment, the pain ebbed, and she was left with only sensation, wonderful sensation.

“Better?” he asked.

“Best,” she murmured.

“Good, because I’ve got to do this.” He thrust up, and she cried out again, this time from pure pleasure. “And this.” He moved once more, filling her completely.

She clung to his shoulders as she rode him, his hips meeting hers, his cock exquisite within her. His thrusts were measured but fierce, and she gasped with each one.

Looking down, she watched his cock plunging in and out of her. Yes. Everywhere, heat. Sensation. She ground her clit against him as he continued to fuck her relentlessly. White-hot, her climax tore through her. He clapped his hand over her mouth, muffling her cries.

When the last filaments of her orgasm faded, she found herself flipped onto her back, her knees up and feet on the mattress. Jack knelt on the ground, his hands continuing to grip her hips. She gazed up at him through pleasure-glazed eyes. Sweat glossed his body. Brutal desire hollowed his cheeks, and his expression was fierce. A beast ready to claim its mate.

More than lust shone in his eyes. A kind of searching, a need. And when he thrust into her, that need blazed even higher.

She gripped the mattress for support as he drove in and out of her. The room was filled with the sounds of flesh against flesh, and their commingled cries. Light gleamed on his muscles as they flexed with effort. Primal. True and real.

With a groan midway between anguish and ecstasy, he suddenly pulled out of her. Hot seed shot from him, coating her belly. He threw his head back as his climax raged on.

At last, he released his grasp of her hips—there would be bruises, but she didn’t care—and planted his hands on either side of her head, his body bowing over hers. Their kiss was molten, deep. She wanted to lose herself in this moment, every inch of her thrumming with satiation.

But he pulled away. She could barely stir as she watched him pad across the room to search for and retrieve a towel from a cabinet. He returned, and sat beside her as he gently, thoroughly, cleaned her.

“Thank you,” she murmured, “for having sense to…” She glanced down at her stomach meaningfully.

A corner of his mouth turned up. “Only sensible thing I’ve done, when it has to do with you.”

When he’d cleaned her, he put the towel aside and gathered her up in his arms. The bed was too small for him, but he managed to twist and turn himself so that they lay cradled together, his front to her back. His lips ran back and forth over her neck, his hand curved at her waist. After the heated activity only minutes earlier, they were quiet now, listening to the predawn birds stirring in the trees outside.

She wondered if, when the sun came up, her landlady would ask her to leave. No mistaking what she and Jack had been doing. Well, she could find someplace else to live. A small price to pay for what had been the most extraordinary experience of her life.

And Nemesis? Would they ask her to leave, too? That would be a bitter cost. Nemesis meant everything to her. She couldn’t leave them. She had to continue with their work.

Yet she couldn’t regret what she’d done, what she and Jack had done together. She didn’t know what it meant, or what the future might bring, but for now, she could allow herself this moment of repletion. She had unleashed her true self, without fear. It had been … remarkable. Jack was remarkable.

Yet the mission was ongoing. She had no idea if it would succeed or not. And if, by luck and determination, they were successful in their plans, then Nemesis would have no further use for Jack, and he would have to go. It would be far too dangerous for him to remain in England. And she’d never leave.

“Wish I could stay,” he said drowsily.

“I wish you could, too.” But it was impossible. Everything about the two of them together was impossible.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tired, sated, his brain fogged with weariness and thoughts of Eva, Jack climbed in the window to his room. Dawn was minutes away, and all he wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep for a year.

He tensed the minute he got inside his room.

Simon leaned against the wall, watching the window, arms folded over his chest.

“Whatever you got to say,” Jack muttered, peeling off his coat, “say it quick. I ain’t in the mood for lectures.” He threw his coat and waistcoat onto a chair and did the same with his shirt. He had a mad impulse to press his shirt to his face. It might carry Eva’s scent, and he wanted to pull it deep into his lungs.

Instead, he made himself move to his washstand and pour water into a basin, which he splashed on his face.

“No lecture.” The toff’s voice was dangerously quiet. In the mirror, Jack saw Simon’s gaze roam over his back as if looking for the best place to stick a knife. “A warning.”

Turning around, Jack dried his face on a cloth. “Threatening me ain’t very smart, gov.”

“I don’t make threats,” Simon answered, still in that deadly soft voice. “When I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. So mark me, Dalton,” he continued, pushing away from the wall, “if you hurt Eva in any way, I will kill you.”

Though the nob didn’t have Jack’s size, it was clear Simon knew how to scrap. Only a real fighter stood the way Simon did now, body and hands loose but ready. His sharp blue eyes revealed a fighter’s confidence. Jack could beat Simon, but the toff would give him a hell of a brawl.

Fury boiled through him at the idea that he might hurt Eva. “Think she can’t take care of herself?”

“I know she can. I’ve known her far longer than you have, and I’ll still know her after you’ve gone.”

Jack didn’t want to think about that, about when the work against Rockley was over and what it meant for him. He could only live in each moment as it happened.

“That’s your plan, then,” he sneered. “Move in after I leave and help nurse her broken heart. Offer a shoulder to cry on, then offer her a lot more.” The thought of Eva with Simon—or her with anyone else—made Jack want to break every piece of furniture within ten miles, then smash down the walls of every building.

To the toff’s credit, he looked appalled. “Christ, no. Eva’s my friend. I’m not looking for a way to get under her skirts.”

“You did.”

“Years ago. I don’t think of her in that way any longer.”

The cage of anger loosened slightly around Jack’s chest. He sat on the edge of his bed and tugged off his boots, letting them fall heavily to the floor. “Then tell me what the hell this is about.”

Simon pointed at him. “This is about you not hurting Eva. Not making her promises you can’t keep.”

Jack knocked Simon’s hand aside. “No one’s promised anyone anything.” How could he? He’d nothing to offer, nothing to vow. All he had was vengeance, and when that was fulfilled—if it was fulfilled—he’d have nil. Not even his name, since he was believed to be dead. Of course he’d leave when the mission was over. He had to. He couldn’t expect anything else.

But Simon, goddamn Simon, had planted seeds in his head. About things that could never happen.

Eva—his. And him being hers. Not just for a few weeks of pleasure, though God knew how incredible that pleasure was. But for months, years. Maybe longer.

His heart beat heavy beneath his ribs, thinking of this. But when the mission was done, and if he still lived, he’d have to move on. Staying would be too dangerous, even if the coppers thought he was dead. There was always a chance someone might recognize him, and he’d be on the run again.

“She understands what’s what,” he said, more for his own benefit than Simon’s. “It’s all temporary.”

Simon exhaled. “As long as that’s recognized by both of you. Once the mission is over, you’re not useful to Nemesis anymore. You leave, and she can move on without regret. Without you.”

“Believe me, gov,” Jack said, “no one knows that more than me.”

* * *

In Bethnal Green, happiness wasn’t handed out like pints of ale. You had to find it—or make it—for yourself. It was either that, or live in a constant state of rage and misery.

When Jack awoke, he let himself lie in bed for a few moments, his gaze roaming around this cramped little room that had become, for a short while, his home. Simon’s warnings still rang in his ears, and their reminder that he could only have Eva for a short while longer. The thought sent a sharp pain through his chest. He rubbed the heel of his hand between his ribs, but the pain wouldn’t recede.

He made himself focus on what good he did have, same as he’d done back on the streets of Bethnal Green.

Last night … His body stirred and his pulse hitched just thinking about it, about Eva, and how she’d finally let free her wildness, her heat. With him. That had been best of all, knowing that she’d shared that secret part of herself only with him. They might not have as long together as he would’ve wanted, but he’d take everything he could get and be glad of it.

And they finally had the evidence against Rockley they needed. Revenge was like vinegar on his tongue. Close. So damn close. He’d been waiting five years. Within a handful of days, he’d see Rockley topple. What would happen afterward, he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t think about it now. Now was for savoring the anticipation of that bastard’s ruin. It might not be as satisfying as killing him, but maybe Nemesis was right and having Rockley live in shame and disgrace could be better. He could sit and stew and let regret tear the flesh from his bones, the way Jack had done in prison.

Was this happiness? No. Jack never knew that feeling. But it was as close to it as he could get.

He rose from bed, and got ready for the day. Judging by the ash-colored light, it was already late afternoon. He smiled—his life had always been lived at night. Only when he got to Dunmoor did that change, rising with the dawn, working all day, and collapsing onto his cot soon after sunset. But he was claiming himself back.

He hurried downstairs, hoping that the rest of Nemesis had gathered so they could talk about the next steps with Rockley. They’d have a plan. They always had a plan.

His steps halted when he found Eva already in the parlor, standing beside the fireplace. He barely noticed Simon and Marco sitting at the table. She didn’t blush or look away, but met his gaze boldly, with unmistakable heat.

It was like invisible hands grabbed him, pulling him toward her. He needed her mouth, the feel of her hands, the warm scent that clung to her neck.

Marco coughed. Loudly. A reminder that Jack and Eva weren’t alone. Goddamn it.

Though he didn’t care what either Marco or Simon thought, Jack couldn’t go to Eva, not even to stand beside her. He’d have to touch her, and one touch would lead to more, and more. Instead, he grabbed a chair, swung it around and straddled it, his arms braced across the back.

“The next steps need to be planned carefully,” Simon announced. “We’re close now. Too close to get sloppy.”

“He’ll have been told that the evidence was stolen,” Eva said. “The madam identified Jack, too. Rockley will know Jack isn’t dead.”

Marco asked, “Won’t he go to the police with that?”

Jack snorted. “And tell them I was spotted busting up a whorehouse where he keeps damning papers? No—he’ll keep his muzzle shut.”

“If he feels the walls caving in around him,” Simon pointed out, “he’ll lash out, try to protect himself.”

“We have to move first before he can.” Eva frowned in thought as she looked into the fire. “It’s time to—”

Everyone silenced as footsteps sounded on the staircase outside. It could have been Lazarus or Harriet, but Jack didn’t recognize the tread. He stood.

Eva opened the door, revealing Byrne. The chemist stood on the landing, his forehead all creased with worry, and held out a slip of paper to her. “This came for you. Not you specifically, miss,” he added, “but I was told to give it to the folks upstairs.”

“Told by whom?” she asked.

“The boy that delivered it. He ran off before I could ask who sent it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Byrne.” She took the note.

“What’s it about?”

She shook her head. “Policy, Mr. Byrne.”

Contrite, the chemist smiled. “Right. Less I know, the safer I am.” He gave a little bow and then trundled back down the stairs.

After Eva closed the door, she unfolded the note. Jack, Marco, and Simon all watched her as she scanned it. A troubled look crossed her face. “It’s from Miss Jones. ‘It is vitally important that you come immediately,’” she read aloud. Glancing up, she added, “The handwriting’s hers, but it’s shaky.”

“She wants us to go to her home?” Marco wondered. “She and her father have always met with us here.”

“Something must be wrong.” Simon got to his feet and put on his hat. “Eva and I will see what’s the matter.”

“I should go, too,” Jack said.

“He did help by talking with her last time,” Eva noted.

Instead of arguing against Jack’s presence, Simon just nodded.

Maybe Jack had earned the toff’s confidence after all.

But it was the look of trust in Eva’s eyes that Jack truly prized.

* * *

Pretty suburban neighborhoods like Hammersmith always made Jack’s skin crawl. It was all so bloody normal, so orderly and neat. Even now, as he, Eva, and Simon walked toward the house of Miss Jones and her family, they passed men returning from their work in the city. The sun hung low on the horizon, and all the good, respectable men of business hurried home for supper. Through the lit, lace-covered windows, Jack watched as women greeted their husbands, taking their hats and coats, offering dutiful kisses on the cheek. Children in clean, starched pinafores clung to their fathers’ legs until they were shooed away by their mothers. The men retired to front parlors, where they read newspapers and smoked pipes.

These were the people who decorated advertisements pushing health tonics, soap, cocoa. Perfect little kingdoms in perfect semidetached houses, and far from anything he’d known.

“Do you envy them?” Eva asked as they passed one house, with its brightly lit front window showing the people inside like actors on a stage.

“There ain’t no thought in it,” he said. “They’re all doing what they think they’re supposed to, but what’s the fun of it? Where are the guts?”

“Perhaps they don’t want fun or guts. Perhaps all they want is security, certitude.”

“Only one thing’s certain,” he said. “We’re all going to wind up in the ground. Way I figure it, that leaves us free to do what we want. Not shut ourselves away in tidy boxes.”

“Radical notion,” she answered. “You might be a revolutionary.”

“Don’t go picking out my crate and setting me up on Speakers’ Corner,” he warned. “I’m just trying to survive, not change the world.” The world could take care of itself. He had his own skin to look after.

But as he, Eva, and Simon walked down a tree-lined street, heading toward Miss Jones’s house, a kick of worry beat beneath his pulse. Worry for the young lady. Eva had said that the girl’s handwriting looked shaky, which meant she’d written her note in a state of distress. Rockley might have threatened her again, or done worse. Jack knew that Eva could take care of herself, but most females hadn’t been given much to defend themselves. They were at the mercy of men and the law, neither of which seemed to care much about the fate of women.

But that’s why Nemesis existed.

Miss Jones’s house was one of the smaller buildings on her block. Unlike most of the other houses, only a few lights burned in the windows. Simon knocked on the door, and after a minute, the girl herself answered the door. Pinched lines showed on either side of her mouth. She looked as if she’d aged ten years in just a few days. Her face was pale, and she twisted a handkerchief in her hands. She definitely didn’t look happy to see any of them on her front step.

“Come in, please,” she said, holding the door open. “I’ve sent our maid out, so we’re alone.”

They all stepped into the entryway as Eva asked, “Where are your parents?”

“Also out.”

“Tell us what this is about,” Jack said.

Miss Jones turned and moved down the hallway. “I’ve got some tea ready in the kitchen.”

Jack, Eva, and Simon all shared a look after she disappeared through a door.

“Don’t like it,” Jack muttered.

Eva frowned. “She’s acting oddly, that’s true.”

“Odd behavior or no,” Simon noted, “she’s our client. If Rockley’s threatening her further, we need to help.”

“Will you come?” Miss Jones asked, reappearing in the doorway.

Feeling restless and ill at ease, Jack followed the others as they filed into a medium-sized kitchen. Racks of pans lined the walls, and an iron stove took up one side of the room. A round table stood in one corner, surrounded by chairs, and beside the table was another door that looked like it led to a pantry.

Miss Jones waved toward the table. “Please sit.”

Jack glanced around the kitchen. “Where’s the tea?”

“I beg your pardon?” the girl asked, looking even more pale despite the heat of the stove.

“You said you’d made tea.” Eva nodded at a kettle, still hung up on its hook. “It’s not even on the fire.”

Miss Jones’s face seemed to crumple. She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth. “I’m sorry!”

Jack heard them before they came into the room—men. He spun to face the door just as three huge bruisers wielding clubs came barreling through. Two more blokes charged from the pantry, one of them holding a lead pipe and the other sporting a pair of brass knuckles.

It was as though someone had rung the bell to start the match—everything became instinct. He grabbed a heavy long-handled pan from its rack and swung it at the three men. From the corner of his eye, he saw Simon tussling with the bloke holding the pipe, ducking to avoid the swinging blows and throwing punches of his own. Eva had a chair in her hands and jabbed its legs at the chap with the brass knuckles, holding him back.

Jack weaved to the side as a club-wielding thug swung at him. He countered by striking with the pan. The thug wasn’t fast enough to dodge the hit, and took the pan hard on the side of his head. He staggered. Jack cracked the pan onto the bloke’s arm. The thug shouted in pain, and his club went flying, smashing into the racks on the walls and sending pots and pans crashing to the floor. The bloke sank to his knees, whimpering as he cradled his broken arm.

Miss Jones shrieked, flinging her handkerchief into the air.

Jack didn’t pay her any mind as he faced the other two near the kitchen entrance. They rushed him at the same time. He picked up an iron spit that lay on the ground, and, armed with the pan in one hand and the spit in the other, parried the bruisers’ strikes. One club caught him across the back, and he grunted with the impact. But he wouldn’t release his makeshift weapons. He kept swinging at the two thugs, holding his ground when they tried to force him back into the corner.

Simon wrestled with the bloke holding the pipe, grabbing hold of it with both hands and using it as leverage to shove his attacker into the wall. Once he had his opponent pinned against the wall, Simon rammed his knee into the bloke’s gut. As the thug doubled over, Simon punched him in the nose. Blood spurted, bright red, and Miss Jones screamed again, louder than the bloke with the smashed nose.

As Jack continued to fight with the two other bruisers, he saw Eva swinging the chair at Brass Knuckles.

“Careful with that, little miss,” the thug sneered. “Might hurt somebody.”

“Like this?” She brought the chair up and raked the points of its legs across Brass Knuckles’s knees. He staggered, then landed on his hands and knees right in front of the stove. She leaped to him and opened the stove’s door, slamming it against his head. Brass Knuckles shouted in pain, but his shouts stopped after Eva gave him a few more good knocks against the iron stove and he collapsed onto the tile floor.

Well, goddamn Jack if the sight of Eva pummeling a thug into unconsciousness wasn’t one of the prettiest things he’d ever seen.

He still had his two club-holding attackers to worry about, though. When one of the blokes lunged for him, Jack slapped the length of the spit against his belly. As the thug crumpled, Jack plunged the spit in and out of his shoulder. The bloke clutched at his wound as blood seeped through his fingers.

That left one remaining thug. He looked at Jack, then at Eva, then at Simon, and finally at his friends writhing in agony on the floor of a suburban kitchen. Dropping his club, he ran from the room.

Jack chased him to the front door. The thug pushed a passing man to the ground as he raced down the street, and Jack shouted at the bruiser’s retreating back, “You tell that fucking bastard that nothing’s stopping me!”

The thug turned a corner and vanished.

As Jack started to shut the door, a bobby marched up the walkway. He tensed, readying himself to fight or run if the copper tried to nab him.

“No need for that language, sir!” the bobby snapped. “This is a respectable neighborhood.”

Before he could say anything, Eva appeared at Jack’s side. “Thank God you’re here, Constable. There was an attempted burglary, and we only just managed to escape unscathed.”

The copper blew on his whistle, and in a few minutes, half a dozen patrolmen milled around inside Miss Jones’s kitchen. Jack kept a good distance between himself and the police, hovering at the edge of the room, keeping his face in the shadows.

“What the hell happened?” one of the bobbies demanded, staring at the groaning, wounded thugs. “Beg your pardon, ladies,” he added, glancing at Eva and Miss Jones.

“We were visiting our friend when these horrible men burst in and demanded our valuables,” Eva said in a shaky voice. “It was simply dreadful!” She ran and threw her arms around Jack, burying her face against him, and he patted her back. It didn’t help that his blood was high after the fight, and feeling her pressed against him made him want another kind of action.

“Looks like you did a number on them,” another copper said, sounding chary.

“I was at Rorke’s Drift,” Simon said flatly.

The constables all looked suitably awed and impressed, and Jack had to admit he was, too. He hadn’t known that about Simon—if it was true. It had to be. That wasn’t the kind of thing a bloke lied about.

“And you?” the first constable asked Jack.

Simon spoke before Jack could. “He was my batman.” With a shrug, Simon added, “It’s impossible to lose a soldier’s instincts. When these men attempted to rob us, we acted according to our training.”

“Thank the heavens for it!” Eva added. “These criminals would have stolen our valuables and murdered us, had it not been for these gentlemen’s quick thinking.”

“Whose house is this?” the constable asked.

“M-mine,” Miss Jones stammered. “It happened j-just like they said. Please—take these men away.”

“We’ll need you to file a report, miss.”

“It will have to wait until tomorrow.” Simon’s tone wouldn’t take a refusal. He sounded exactly like the upper cruster he was. “The women are clearly distraught.”

The coppers all blustered their agreement. After clapping restraints on the thugs, the police carted them off in a Black Maria. Cramped and uncomfortable, those vans were. Jack had slammed around in it like a caged dog when they’d taken him away, as if he could have knocked the metal sides down. But the blokes inside now were too injured to do more than groan as the van drove off.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Jones cried once they were alone again in the wrecked kitchen. Weeping, she covered her face with her hands. “I’m so very sorry. I had no choice.”

As Jack and Simon stood with their arms crossed, Eva held out a fresh handkerchief. “Tell us what happened.”

The girl blew her nose. “I saw in the paper that a criminal’s body was pulled from the Thames, and I recognized Mr. Dutton—that is, Mr. Dalton—from the picture accompanying the story.” She glanced at him. “You were so kind to me, and I believed for certain that Lord Rockley had killed you. I was … horrified. Outraged. I knew I had to do something.”

Eva pinched the bridge of her nose. “God, tell me you didn’t.”

Miss Jones gazed at the broken crockery scattered across the floor. “Clearly, I did.”

“And clearly, I ain’t dead,” Jack said.

“I know that now,” the girl answered.

Jack snorted. “Don’t sound so glum about it.”

Clenching his jaw, Simon said, “You should have come to us.”

“I thought it was my involving you that led to Mr. Dalton’s death,” Miss Jones replied. “I was determined to see an end to this. So I summoned my courage and went to Lord Rockley.” She held up a hand before Jack, Eva, or Simon could scold her for such stupidity. “It was dangerous and injudicious, I know, but I believed I could handle the problem on my own. I said that I knew he’d murdered Mr. Dalton, and that he had to turn himself over to the police at once.”

“Which he didn’t do,” Jack said.

“He laughed at me,” the girl confessed. “‘Dalton’s an escaped convict, a menace,’ he said. ‘I’ve done the law a favor by killing him. They’ll give me a commendation for ridding the world of such scum.’”

Fire raced through Jack’s veins to hear Rockley’s words—though they weren’t a surprise. If ever two men had been placed on this blighted earth to hate each other, those men were Jack and Rockley.

“Then he threw me out,” Miss Jones continued. “He said I was to tell no one, or he’d make my life even more miserable than it already was. I was so … ashamed … and frightened, I couldn’t leave my home or speak to anyone. Not even my parents. But then, this morning, Lord Rockley showed up at my door. He said that I had to summon the people I had working for me, and that he would take care of the rest.”

“And if you disobeyed him?” Eva asked.

“He’d hurt my parents.” The girl’s eyes and voice were pleading. “I had to do it. You must understand that.” She broke down into another round of sobs.

“The bastard put it together.” Jack swore under his breath. “The girl goes to him on account of him ‘killing’ me, then I show up at the brothel to take the evidence.”

“So he connects you and the blackmailing to Miss Jones,” Eva said.

“And Miss Jones to us,” Simon finished.

“He might not know Nemesis’s name,” said Eva, “but he realizes that there’s a larger force behind her attempt at retribution. What could be easier than luring us to her home and killing us all in one fell swoop?”

Jack wished there were more of Rockley’s thugs around so he had something—someone—to hit.

“We can’t wait another bloody minute,” he snarled. “It’s got to end. Now.”

“It will end.” Eva’s gaze moved to the small windows set high in the wall, where the last shreds of daylight died. “Tonight.”

* * *

Eva knew the threat had never been higher. None of them could discount the possibility that Rockley had Miss Jones’s house watched. They’d instructed the girl to take her family and go somewhere safe for a few days. Things with Rockley had escalated, so the Joneses needed to be out of harm’s way.

Eva, Jack, and Simon took a twisting, circuitous route back to headquarters—doubling, sometimes tripling back, changing carriages, riding omnibuses, and going on foot. By the time Eva, Jack, and Simon reached the chemist’s shop, it had been hours since sunset.

When she reported to Marco, Lazarus, and Harriet about the ambush at Miss Jones’s home, the first response was shocked silence. Followed by every voice raised at once. All of Nemesis had an opinion, and they spoke it—loudly.

Eva raised her hands, demanding quiet. “We’re finishing this. Immediately.”

“I’ve got a note here,” Simon added, “that will be delivered to Rockley within the hour. We’re arranging an exchange: ten thousand pounds in return for the evidence.”

“That won’t do any sodding good,” Jack rumbled. “Saying he doesn’t double-cross us—which he will—all we’re getting out of him is money. He’ll continue grinding people into the dirt. Nothing’s going to keep him from hurting more women.”

She pulled out a metal strongbox, smaller than the one taken from the brothel, and removed a packet of documents. Handing the papers to Jack, she said, “Have a look at these.”

He studied them. “It’s what we took from the whorehouse.”

“Duplicates,” Marco said. “Forgeries, actually.”

“I ain’t an expert,” Jack murmured, examining the papers, “but they look exactly the same.”

Marco smirked. “One of my specialties when I was still in her majesty’s employ. A good forgery can be worth more than the original.”

“That’s what Rockley will be given,” Eva explained.

“Someone gets the real things,” Jack deduced.

Simon revealed, “I’ve high-up contacts within the government. Men who haven’t been touched by Rockley’s influence. By midnight tonight, they will be in possession of the real evidence.”

Taking the forgeries back from Jack, Eva said, “His treachery will be revealed. Tomorrow morning, everyone shall know about his perfidy. He’ll be utterly ruined.”

“But he won’t know that when we do the swap,” Jack said. “We bilk him out of ten thousand quid, and still get to destroy the son of a bitch.” He looked around the room with a vicious smile. “I think I like you Nemesis lot.” His gaze lit on her, the cold light of retribution warming to something much more personal.

She could get far too comfortable seeing that heat and intimacy. She could start to crave things she shouldn’t have, and leave herself open to immeasurable pain.

Yet her bones, her heart—they ached with wanting him. In the midst of all this madness, the flame of her need burned even brighter.

She busied herself putting away the forged documents, striving for the control that had served her so well for most of her life. The only time she truly lost control was with him. A hazardous thing.

“Now isn’t the opportune moment for celebrating,” she said briskly. “It’s almost certain that if Rockley agrees to the exchange, he’ll try something. We’ve got him cornered, and that makes him dangerous. Today at Miss Jones’s was proof. This juncture is critical, so we cannot let our guard down.”

Jack said, “I don’t get … what’s the word…”

“Complacent,” Eva filled in.

“Yeah. Nobody complacent survives Bethnal Green.”

“Or escapes from prison,” added Harriet.

“Or ascertains the patterns in seemingly random vagaries in a man’s schedule,” Marco threw in.

“Or fights his way in and out of a heavily guarded brothel,” Simon said.

Jack tipped his head in acknowledgment. It warmed her to think how, when first she’d met him, he hadn’t given much value to his intelligence, and neither had the others in Nemesis. A radical evolution had transpired.

Simon headed for the door. “I’ll use our usual means of obfuscation to have this note delivered to Rockley. I won’t wait for a reply, but there will be no way for him to trace the note back to our location.”

“How will we know if he agrees to the drop?” asked Harriet.

“He’ll go for it,” Jack said with certainty. “He won’t play by the rules, but if he thinks he’s got a way to take us out, he’ll grab any chance. Make sure he knows that I’ll be the one doing the drop. That’ll definitely bring him out, not just his thugs. He’ll want to see with his own eyes that it’s been taken care of.”

Nodding, Simon slipped out the door. Harriet, Lazarus, and Marco tried to fill the time by discussing a mining town under the thumb of despotic owners and managers, but all of them were tense, distracted. Her mind spinning with dozens, hundreds of possible outcomes for tonight, Eva couldn’t join in with her colleagues’ talk. Through it all, Jack stood off to the side, massaging his hands in preparation for a fight, his expression distant and brooding.

Needing some way to occupy herself, Eva said to him, “Show me how you escaped from here without anyone knowing.”

He considered it for a moment, seeming to debate whether or not it was a good idea to reveal his secret to her and to Nemesis. Then, “Awright.”

Yet instead of going up to his room, he went downstairs, with Eva following. They walked through the chemist’s shop. He stepped outside, and she trailed after him as he went through the narrow space that ran alongside the building. They emerged in the little yard behind the structure. Their breath steamed in the cold night air, as though she and Jack had become half dragon.

He pointed up to his room. “Just opened the window, climbed out and down. Simple.”

“Not so simple.” She stared up at the thirty-foot climb. “There isn’t much to hold on to, and if you’d fallen, you could have broken something. A leg, or your neck.”

He shrugged. “Something any housebreaker worth his picks knows how to do.”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Let me be impressed, damn it. For a man with so much braggadocio, you can be ridiculously modest sometimes.”

“Bragga—”

“It means swagger, confidence. Arrogance.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’ve got that. But I don’t see the point in talking up something that anyone can do.”

“Not anyone.” She glanced around the yard, dark and bare. “Desmond—he’s on assignment, so you haven’t met him yet—he tried to start a garden out here. A vegetable patch and some flowers.”

Jack scraped the toe of his boot through the dirt. “You couldn’t grow rocks out here.”

“For a year, Des kept at it. We’d find him out here at all hours, digging in the dirt, muttering over seeds and soil composition.” She nudged a dried, twisted root with her shoe. “But nothing took. Drove him half mad.”

“My ma said her grandda could grow anything anywhere. He’d drop a pebble into the dust and a whole cabbage would spring up, or so she told us.”

“Did you know him?”

Jack stuffed his hands into his pockets and scuffed around in the dirt. “He was long dead by the time me and Edith came around. And Ma hadn’t seen or spoken to her kin since she was a girl. She came to London looking for work.” He made a low sardonic sound. “Turned out right dandy for her. Wasn’t no more than six and twenty when she died.”

A long life, by Bethnal Green standards. Daily, Eva had evidence of the cruelty of humanity, yet it never failed to pierce her whenever she confronted it again. Was it any wonder she fought so hard to keep herself protected?

Looking over at Jack as he moodily contemplated the barren soil, that same piercing sensation struck her. She was too vulnerable to him—yet she couldn’t stop herself from wanting him.

They both turned at the sound of footsteps. Lazarus appeared at the edge of the yard. “Oi, you two. Simon’s back.”

Upstairs, they found Simon surrounded by the others. He was keen as a knife about to be thrown. “It’s done. We’re meeting Rockley at two in the morning, at the Tower Bridge construction site. No one will be there at that hour, so there’s less chance of a passerby getting caught in the crossfire.”

Nobody disputed that there would be crossfire.

The clock on the mantel showed the hour to be several minutes past ten. Fortifying themselves with coffee, the members of Nemesis and Jack gathered around the table to discuss strategy. Lazarus drew up a map of the construction site, and they used this to plot out their positions and tactics. Every eventuality was considered—but no one had the gift of precognition. Situations might arise that no one could foresee. The consolation was that everyone had enough training to handle the unexpected.

By midnight, the air had grown thick with strategies and possibility, dense as the smoke from Lazarus’s pipe.

Simon leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head. “The only chance we have to ensure the success of this mission is if everyone acts in accordance with the plan.” He looked pointedly at Jack.

As much as they’d grown to trust Jack, he was still the wild card. He’d be within striking distance of the man who killed his sister. Such an opportunity might be too difficult to pass up.

“I know my part, gov,” Jack muttered. “Didn’t come this far just to botch it within spitting distance of the end.”

“You’ve done all right by us, Dalton,” Lazarus said.

“It wasn’t your welfare that interested me,” answered Jack.

Blunt as always. One of the things she liked about him.

“But yours does.” Jack nodded at Eva. “I don’t like the idea of you coming to the drop.”

“Pity,” she said, “because I am.”

“It’ll be sodding dangerous.”

“But the rest of this mission has been safe as a nursery.” When he scowled, she continued. “Gilling surely told Rockley about me, and the thug that attacked us at Miss Jones’s house saw me, too. Rockley knows I’m part of this operation. I need to be there at the exchange. If I’m not at the drop as your backup, he’ll know that you’ll have people stashed out of sight. He’ll see you standing by yourself and then call off the exchange.”

“Then have Simon in plain sight,” Jack countered.

“I have to be there,” she insisted. “I’ve worked on this mission from the beginning, and I’m not crawling away to hide now that we’re almost at the end. The decision isn’t yours to make, but I need you to have faith in me.”

“I’ve got plenty of faith in you,” he said. “It’s Rockley and his men I don’t trust.”

“Me, either.” She lowered her voice. “And that’s why I need to be there to make certain you’re safe. No one I trust with your safety more than me.” She glanced at Marco and Simon. “No insult intended.”

Both men held up their hands. “None taken,” said Marco.

Jack was dourly silent for a long moment. Then he muttered, “Goddamn it.”

As acceptance went, his wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. But she didn’t care if he adored the idea of her coming to the exchange. All that mattered was ensuring the success of the mission and protecting Jack.

* * *

She glanced once more at the clock. Less than two hours until they met Rockley for the exchange. Despite her assertive words to Jack, her heart rammed against her ribs. In all her missions for Nemesis, none of their adversaries had been as unpredictable, as dangerous as Rockley. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to ensure his security. A wealthy—and desperate—man. He’d already tried to kill them. Anything could happen tonight. Any of them might be wounded. Or worse.

Her gaze lingered on Jack, dark and austere as he moodily stared at the map of the construction site.

She’d faced risk before, but never had the stakes seemed so high. If anything were to happen to him …

The walls of the parlor suffocated, the tick of the clock deafened. She felt herself on the verge of angry recklessness. It beckoned to her with pointed fingers and glassy eyes. No—she needed control of herself. Yet to spend another minute inside would see the fine threads of her reserve snap.

“Where are you going?” Jack and Simon asked in unison as she bolted for the door.

“I’ll be back for the exchange,” she managed to say, “I just—”

And then she was out the door, down the stairs, and out into the night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jack was a man of instinct. He acted as his gut steered him to do. So when he saw Eva bolt from the room, he immediately went after her without a second thought.

She was a fast one, though. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to the chemist’s shop had already swung shut behind her. He was out on the sidewalk a second later, just in time to see her figure disappearing into the shadows at the end of the street.

Calling her name would just wake the neighborhood. Instead, he ran in pursuit, along dark streets barely lit by flickering lamps. He followed the sound of her boots on the pavement, his own heart pounding in time. He kept seeing her face the moment before she’d run from Nemesis headquarters. A kind of wildness and fury he’d not seen in her eyes before. Worry gripped him like a fist around the throat. She seemed capable of anything.

He turned a corner and caught the flash of her skirts in the lamplight. She headed toward a little park dense with trees and shadows.

The hell with it. “Eva!”

She turned at the sound of his voice. Her eyes were like an animal’s—an animal that would tear your hand off if you tried to feed it. She backed into the park, until the darkness swallowed her.

He sprinted into the park and plunged through the shrubbery, shoving aside branches that scratched at his face, until he emerged in front of a small brick shed surrounded by grass.

Eva paced back and forth in front of the building.

He moved toward her slowly, step by step, the way one might approach a hawk caught in a snare. How was he supposed to get close to her? She seemed ready to bolt at the smallest movement. Some small words, then.

“How many missions have you been on for Nemesis?” he asked.

His question seemed to catch her off guard. “Eight.”

“You always get this nettled before a face-off?” He took another step closer.

She shook her head. “This is the first time.”

“Then what’s got you so riled?”

Her pacing stopped. Fitful light barely pushed through the trees and shrubbery. She looked more shadow than flesh, the details of her blending into darkness. Yet he could feel her, knew all of her—a map carved into his chest. He took one more step toward her.

“I’ve never had so much to lose before,” she said tightly. “You could get hurt. Or you’ll survive, but then you have to leave. Either way, I lose you.”

There was a crashing inside him like a carriage accident, spilling pleasure and fear and anger all out onto the pavement in a heap of confusion.

“I don’t want it to happen,” she went on, “but it will, and it makes me so damn furious.”

He was silent. How could he get her to burn that fury out of her? Rage was a dicey thing—it motivated or derailed, and he didn’t want her so distracted by it that she might do something dangerous.

“Hit me,” he said.

“I’m not going to hit you,” she said, appalled.

“When anger’s eating me up and got me so I can’t think, best way I know to get rid of it is to hit something. You’d break your hand if you punched a tree or the wall. So, best thing for it is to hit me.” He stood with his arms at his sides, presenting himself as a target.

Still, she hesitated. So he held up his hands, palms out. “Use these. Like sparring pads.”

For another moment, she didn’t move. Then she landed a jab in his palm. He kept his feet, but the strength in her punch came as a surprising certainty.

“I can’t let myself lose control,” she said, keeping her knuckles pressed against his palm. “I can’t disappoint Nemesis. I can’t let you down.”

A throb made itself at home between his ribs, the pain much greater than the dull ache in his hands. “Won’t happen.” He closed his fingers around her fist. Held it against his palm.

She stared up at him. He lifted his free hand up to cradle the back of her head and kissed her, swallowing her doubt with his lips. She tasted of night and spice, and he drank her down, wanting her breath to replace his own, needing the feel of her mouth. He’d meant the kiss to be some kind of comfort, but hunger roared to life the moment he touched her.

She returned the kiss with her own sharp need. Her mouth opened to him, her tongue slicked against his, and he felt that stroke all the way down to his cock.

Releasing her fist, he curved his hand around her waist. When he pushed his hips against hers, she widened her legs. He walked them backward, until she leaned on the brick wall, and he pressed himself against her. Her hands gripped his arse, fingernails digging into him as she urged him closer. He groaned at the feel of her cradling him and her desperate demand. Not shy, his Eva.

Hazily, he was glad of the hour’s lateness. No one was in the park except him, Eva, and the nighttime. No one to hear her gasps as he rocked his hips into hers, or his animallike sounds.

Something seemed to drive them, some urge that pushed them both. A wild hunger that wanted to defy the danger looming ahead. Within the next few hours, either they’d win out against Rockley or everything would go to hell.

He wanted all of her. For as long as he could have her.

As she seemed to want him. Their kiss grew more urgent, starving.

With a brutal groan, he pulled back. “Need to be inside you.”

“Yes,” she gasped, undoing the buttons of his trousers. They kissed, mouths open, panting with need. His body pressed against hers as they leaned against the wall. She was slim and strong beneath him, her fingers wrapping around his cock the sweetest thing he’d ever felt. As he gathered up her skirts, he felt the shaking in his hands. Hunger for her shuddered through him.

If only the damn world could stop. If we’d just have this forever.

He stroked up her legs, over her stockings, until he found the bare skin of her thighs. She shook, too. He tugged her drawers down, and she kicked them away. And then he ran his hands over her hips, her arse. His fingers found her pussy’s wetness. They both moaned as he stroked between her lips and rubbed the hard bud of her clit.

“Now, Jack,” she demanded breathlessly. “No more waiting.”

Grateful for his strength, he lifted her up, his hands on her hips, fitted himself to her entrance, and then brought her down onto him in one hard thrust. Oh, God, she was so slick, so tight around him. She gasped, her breath hot on his neck and her arms around his shoulders.

For a moment, he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move, only felt her surrounding him and the beat of her heart against his. Then she shifted, a slight movement of her hips, and he was gone.

He thrust up into her, using the wall for leverage. Her heels hooked around his calves. He sank into her with thick, deep strokes. Too rough? Yet she only held him tighter, and her gasps came quick and hot with every thrust.

“This is for you and me,” he growled. “We’ll never lose this.” He punctuated his words with his hips driving against hers.

She moaned his name—the best thing he’d ever heard. As contained as she kept herself, only he could make her feel this way, could push her beyond the limits of her control.

He shifted, making sure that with each thrust, he ground against her clit. Her whole body tensed, and just in time, he covered her lips with his, swallowing her cry as she came. But he couldn’t be satisfied, not until she cried out again, and once more.

As she continued to tremble, he lifted her up and off him. She was pliant, her eyes gone heavy-lidded, as he turned her around and placed her hands on the wall. Gazing back at him, she arched her back, lifting her hips in bold invitation.

“Never seen anything prettier,” he rasped.

He grasped her hips, then drove into her. Already pushed to the edge of his restraint, he couldn’t keep himself from moving hard and fast, his strokes into her almost brutal. Yet she met him eagerly, pushing herself back onto him as if she couldn’t get enough of him.

He could never have enough of Eva. The heat of her, this hidden wild woman who was his alone. That they were both fully dressed but bare in the most important places only sharpened his excitement.

It took more control than he knew he had to pull out a moment before his seed shot from him, his orgasm hot and relentless. God, how he wanted to come inside her. But even lost in pleasure and need, he had to be smart.

Still, he bent over her, her back curved against his chest, as they struggled to breathe. She felt small beneath him, almost delicate, but he wasn’t fooled. She was every bit as strong as him, maybe stronger. Such a fighter, his Eva, so full of fire.

He nuzzled her nape, inhaling the scent of her skin, her sweat, and when he scraped his teeth over the skin, she gave a little tremble of pleasure. His own legs felt shaky.

Time slipped away. Nothing either of them could do to stop it.

Fishing around in his pocket, he found a handkerchief, and used it to clean them both. Slowly, they collected themselves, righting their clothing.

“They’ll know what we’ve been up to,” he said, tucking strands of her hair behind her ear.

“Can’t bring myself to give a damn.”

He bent and kissed her. “That’s my lass.”

A flash of loss crossed her face, and he realized that he’d spoken of something that couldn’t ever be. She wasn’t his lass. Just as she’d said, surviving tonight meant they’d have to go their separate ways—her to the life she’d built for herself and him to an unknown future. He’d never given much thought to what the future held for him. As he and Eva left the park and walked back toward Nemesis headquarters, he saw that if he did live past tonight, the time ahead without her would be emptier than the heath surrounding Dunmoor Prison.

* * *

As Eva and Jack neared Nemesis headquarters, she felt herself sharpen and focus—as though she were a telescope aimed skyward and the blurred forms of stars were gaining clarity, precision. The riotous, angry pounding of her heart steadied with each step.

He had done that. Or rather, they had, with the heat of their bodies and the strength they drew from each other. She trusted her Nemesis colleagues, but somewhere during this mission, she’d learned to trust Jack with a conviction that reverberated all the way to her marrow.

Natural as oxygen, he’d taken her hand for the return journey to headquarters. She glanced down at the sight—his hand so much bigger than hers, roughened from hard labor—and a sudden, sharp throb pierced her calm. How had this happened? She’d been so careful. But it had. Losing him would be a wound she’d carry with her the rest of her life. But she had to stay here, in London, with Nemesis. This was her work, her life. She couldn’t turn her back on it. Not even for her own happiness.

She made herself concentrate on what was to come. If her thoughts strayed, she put herself and her team in danger. Yet both she and Jack were tensely silent.

They approached the chemist’s shop, and Marco and Simon emerged from the shadows. Simon had slung his rifle on his shoulder, as he had when he’d been in the army. It was the same Martini-Henry he’d used at Rorke’s Drift, and she knew he trusted the weapon far more than most people. He never lost his military bearing, but with the rifle on his back and his expression blade-sharp, he looked every inch the soldier.

Marco appeared unarmed, but she knew that he had a revolver in a special shoulder harness he’d constructed—his preferred method of carrying weapons. Where Simon favored forthright military tactics, Marco held fast to the methodology of subterfuge. The vestiges of being a spy.

Neither men spoke as she and Jack approached. Simon and Marco both gazed at Jack’s and Eva’s joined hands. Difficult to read her colleagues’ expressions in the darkness. They were all of them expert in hiding their emotions. Unblinking, Eva returned their opaque looks.

Jack, however, wasn’t as adept at concealment. His jaw formed a hard, square line, and he seemed to grow even larger, more intimidating. A deliberate challenge. His body language said plainly, I’m not sorry, and if you’ve got something to say about it, I’ll make you hurt.

Damn, there was that pain in her heart again.

At last, Simon gave a brusque nod. He held something out to Eva. Her gun and a pouch of ammunition.

She took the weapon and bullets and tucked them into her pockets. “I didn’t bring you anything.”

“Next time.”

Marco handed Jack a revolver, ammunition, and a leather portfolio. “These are the forged documents.”

Rifling through the papers, Jack said without looking up, “He’s going to double-cross us.”

“Certainly he will,” she said. A man like Rockley would never hold to his word. Of course, Nemesis also planned on deceiving Rockley. He didn’t know that, however. Rockley would want his money back and his blackmailers—particularly Jack—dead.

“We’ll make the swap,” Jack continued, stashing the revolver in the inside pocket of his coat. “And he’ll give some kind of signal. The blokes he’ll have stashed somewhere will start shooting.”

“How will you recognize his signal?” Simon asked.

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

It was a measure of everyone’s faith in Jack that none of them questioned his instinct.

“When Rockley gives his signal,” Jack went on, “I’ll give mine. That’s when you lads lay down some cover for me and Eva.”

“What’s the signal to be?” Eva asked.

Jack thought for a moment. “Bollocks,” he said with a smirk.

“It couldn’t be something a little more elegant?” Marco complained. “Bach, perhaps? Or Bernini?”

“He’d know for certain something was up if I start talking like a toff.”

Marco glowered.

“Bollocks it is, then,” said Eva.

“No heroics, no attempts on Rockley’s life,” Simon cautioned. “We’ll provide enough cover for you two to get out of there, and then all of us retreat.”

Jack scowled at that word.

“This is how it’s got to be,” Simon continued.

“So long as we all make it out alive”—he glanced quickly at Eva—“then I’m happy as a goddamn Sunday roast.”

She made herself ignore the shard of fear that embedded itself in her heart, thinking of Jack hurt or worse, and pulled a timepiece from her pocket. “It’s approaching two. We need to arrive with enough time to get Marco and Simon into position.”

As she spoke, a hackney clattered to a stop in front of them.

“To the minute, sir,” the driver said, tipping his hat at Simon. The weapon on Simon’s back made the cabman start, but he didn’t drive off.

Marco climbed lightly into the carriage. The vehicle tipped, however, when Jack did the same. Before Eva could take a step into the cab, however, Simon’s hand on her elbow stopped her.

He said in a low voice, “If there’s the slightest chance—”

“My mind is clear,” she replied. “I won’t endanger anyone on the team.”

He frowned. “It’s you I’m concerned about.”

“Have I ever fallen short?” she countered.

“You’ve never had such a distraction before.”

“He’s not a distraction.”

“And she can bloody well take care of herself,” Jack added with a snarl, sticking his head out of the carriage.

Simon exhaled through his teeth. “I know that.”

“Then get the hell in the cab,” she said.

Fortunately, Simon made no further comment. But he was still gently raised, and so he insisted she climb into the carriage before he did. Once they were all inside, Marco rapped on the roof, and they were off. Jack was a solid, warm presence beside her in the carriage. She did not care if Simon and Marco watched as she took Jack’s hand. All that mattered was surviving the next hour.

* * *

In the darkness, the Tower Bridge construction site looked as if some massive creature had fallen dead beside the Thames and rotted away, leaving only jutting bones. Scaffolds in various states of assembly clustered on the bank. Girders stacked atop each other, and cranes waited like vultures. Metal tracks crisscrossed the ground, partially completed. Construction had only recently begun, with the support structures still being built before the real work could start. Eva had seen sketches of the proposed bridge in the newspaper, but it was difficult to imagine such an engineering marvel could emerge from this chaos.

That was a concern saved for the construction workers and engineers. Right now, she was more worried about the number of places Rockley might hide his own hired guns, and the treacherous terrain. With the moon waning and only a few lamps casting dim pools of light here and there, shadows were too abundant. But the darkness could be Nemesis’s friend, too.

She and the others approached on foot, having left the cab several blocks back. The shapes of the scaffolds rose up out of the night, and the only sounds came from the river slapping against the pilings. The site was deserted.

“I’d expect this place to be patrolled,” she whispered to Jack.

“Wager Rockley paid off the guards,” he answered under his breath. “No witnesses.”

The swap was to take place in an open expanse, with the river on one side and a grouping of temporary buildings that served as construction offices on the other. Crates and piles of timber formed the final boundaries of the site. Jack and Eva would meet Rockley in the middle of the expanse.

With a silent hand signal, Simon had them stop. He pointed to the tallest scaffold, a structure three stories high. More crates clustered at the very top of the scaffold. It would make an excellent vantage for someone armed with a rifle. By the time Eva glanced back at Simon, he’d already disappeared.

Marco nodded toward a tall stack of metal sheets near the exchange site. It would serve as good cover for him as he kept an eye on the proceedings. Then he, like Simon, melted into the darkness.

Jack and Eva were alone.

The time was nearly two, but she allowed herself just a moment to simply look at him, just as he looked at her. He’d grown no less large or powerful in the time she had known him. The lamps’ flickering light only highlighted the hard contours of his face, the breadth of his shoulders. To anyone first seeing him, he seemed exactly like the kind of man one didn’t want to meet in a dark, deserted place.

Yet, only an hour earlier, they’d given each other a fierce, desperate pleasure, and it still resonated through her body. He’d kissed her with passion and care, his big, rough hands cupping her face tenderly. And he stared at her now with an expression both warm and fierce.

“Can’t kiss you now.” His voice was a low rumble, meant for her ears alone. “If Rockley’s watching—”

“We won’t give him any advantage.” A personal attachment could be exploited.

“But, God, how I want to taste you again. One last time.”

“Not the last time,” she insisted. “We stick to the plan, we punish Rockley, we survive.”

“Holding you to that,” he said.

She drew in a breath. “The orchestra’s tuned. Now we play the final movement.”

They were silent for a moment. Then, together, they walked toward the exchange site, weaving between the stacks of building materials and crates, until they reached one end of the open area. The space itself was the length of three train cars and exposed enough to give any hidden gunman a decent shot.

Two men appeared at the other end. One of them was the hulking tower of muscle, Ballard. Despite the other man’s dark clothing, she recognized him immediately: Rockley. He held a case, presumably containing ten thousand pounds.

Jack muttered a curse. Hatred seemed to pour out of him in unseen surges. But he didn’t rush toward Rockley. He kept his ground, waiting.

“He’s got more men with him,” Jack said, low enough for only her to hear.

“I see two lurking behind those crates to the right,” she whispered back.

“And two more off to the left.”

Not unexpected, but still troubling. They were outnumbered. At the least, they had Marco and Simon to help. “It’s going to be a fighting retreat.”

“Always knew it would be.” He seemed eager for it, in fact.

“Ready?” Eva whispered.

He nodded, terse.

Yet they hadn’t taken more than a step before Rockley’s command cut through the stillness. “Just you, Dalton. The woman remains behind.”

She and Jack exchanged a look, his gaze showing clear reluctance to leave her, but they knew they’d have to capitulate in order to complete the trade.

“Then your man stays put,” Jack shouted back.

A taut silence, and then, “So be it.”

Jack inhaled, and moved to take a step.

She couldn’t stop herself. “Jack.”

He stopped without looking back.

“Be careful.” Minimal words, but they were all she could offer.

After a moment, he said, “Same to you.”

She smiled faintly to herself. A fine pair of poets they were.

Her smile died as Jack walked away. There was nothing for her to do now but wait, watch, and hope.

* * *

Jack felt every step like an earthquake. He wondered why the scaffolds didn’t collapse and the ground didn’t shudder. It seemed as if he could break the whole sodding planet apart with each step forward.

The distance between him and Rockley narrowed. It was dark, so Jack couldn’t see the bastard’s face very well, but it didn’t matter. Rockley’s polished, handsome features were burned into his mind. He knew his face, his gait, his voice. He was like one of those diseases that ate a body from the inside out, always there, impossible to fully remove. Rockley was Jack’s sickness. After tonight, either Jack would be cured, or the disease would kill him.

He and Rockley faced each other. A distance of five feet separated them. Such a small distance. Jack could snap his neck before any of Rockley’s men could make a move. But this was about more than blood for blood.

Jack held up the portfolio. “Got the papers. I want to see the money.”

Rockley lifted the case. “It’s here. But I want to verify the documents are genuine.”

“And I don’t want you giving me bundles of newspaper topped by a few pound notes.”

Jack and Rockley edged close enough to each other so that they could reach for the cases. Both of them were silent and tense as they extended their arms, then made the swap. He and the lord eyed each other warily as they examined their respective goods.

Flipping open the case, Jack saw rows of ten-pound notes neatly bundled with ribbon. He pulled out one of the bundles and ran his thumb over the money, then did the same with all of the packets. It was all there. Ten thousand pounds.

All the more reason to distrust Rockley. The son of a bitch would never part with that much money, despite the fact that he could afford it ten times over.

Jack watched Rockley carefully as he examined the sheaf of documents, looking for any sign that Rockley suspected them to be forgeries. After a moment, Rockley stuffed the papers back into the portfolio.

“It’s all there,” Rockley said.

Jack silently exhaled. Marco’s forgeries had done their job.

Now he asked the question he’d wanted to ask for five years. “Why the hell did you kill Edith?”

Rockley’s lips tightened. “Edith was … a mistake. She panicked like an idiot when things got rough, and we struggled. Hurting her was an accident.”

Sickness burned Jack’s throat. Sickness and rage. “You should have called a damned doctor instead of letting her bleed to death on the floor.”

Staring at him, appalled, Rockley said, “I’d never risk my own reputation, my family name for a whore from Bethnal Green.”

Jack had to walk away. Before he killed Rockley.

“We’re finished here,” he growled.

A smug little smile danced around Rockley’s mouth. The bastard had never been a good card player. “Yes, we are indeed finished.”

Holding the portfolio, Rockley turned away. He took a step, then dropped the portfolio to the ground. The sound echoed through the construction site, loud as a cannon.

“Bollocks!” Jack shouted, and ran for cover.

* * *

Gunfire rang out. Eva sprinted toward the shelter of several crates. As she did, she cast a glance over her shoulder, looking for Jack. He took a step toward her, but more gunfire held him back. With clear misgivings, he ran in the opposite direction, finding cover behind a stack of lumber.

Making an escape was impossible. The intelligence they’d gathered about the configuration of the construction site must have come from an earlier date, because the lumber and equipment were in different arrangements. The only way out would mean she and Jack had to cross a huge, exposed stretch, making them easy targets. All she and the others could do was fight.

Ducking behind the crates, Eva took stock of the situation. Rockley had disappeared, but his hired muscle shot at Jack and Eva from their positions. There were two thugs plus Ballard closer to Jack, and two men nearer to Eva. She waited for the telltale muzzle flash of their weapons before shooting back. But she had to be judicious. She possessed a limited number of bullets. Each shot had to count.

One of the thugs closer to her made a break from his cover and ran right toward her. A high whine from a rifle’s bullet pierced the air, and the thug turned and ran back to his cover. Simon. She’d be sure to thank him later.

Eva heard grunts and more gunfire from Jack’s side of the construction site. Her heart lodged itself firmly in her throat. Jack was the one with the money. He’d be the primary target. Need to help him.

Rising up out of her crouch, she readied herself to break from behind her cover. As she did so, a large, dark shape loomed in front of her. She dove to the ground a moment before a pistol barked and a bullet slammed into the crate behind her. Had she been any slower, that bullet would’ve gone right through her skull.

Eva hit the ground and fired at the same time. The muzzle flash illuminated one of Rockley’s thugs lunging toward her. Then he groaned and fell heavily to the ground.

Getting to her feet, she warily approached the fallen man. He clutched his shoulder, blood dripping through his fingers.

She picked up the thug’s gun and shoved it into her handbag. A quick patting down of his body uncovered no other weapons. He wouldn’t be going anywhere.

More shots rang out from across the construction site. She heard Jack’s cursing and the thumps of fists meeting flesh. From the sound of things, he was outnumbered. After making certain that her gun was fully loaded, she ran toward him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The instant the first shot rang out, Jack’s only thought was for Eva. It didn’t matter that he knew she could take care of herself—he acted on instinct, and that instinct demanded he protect her. But the gunfire kept him from going to her. No choice but to find his own cover and hope like hell she did the same.

He threw himself behind a stack of wooden planks and immediately returned fire. Strange to fire a gun again after so long. It’d always been a last resort.

No sign of Rockley. The bastard had snuck off. His men stayed behind, though, trading shots with Jack and the other members of Nemesis. Jack’s only relief came when he saw the flash of Eva’s gun from the other side of the construction yard.

Firing guns in the middle of the night was a sure way to attract the coppers, and it didn’t surprise Jack when Rockley’s hired men stopped shooting. Tense silence fell. He crept forward, snaking his way between crates and piles of metal. The damned escape routes weren’t where they were supposed to be. A fight it had to be, then.

The thugs had to be taken out. They’d keep coming after him, trying to get the money back, unless he stopped them first.

He needed to lure them out into the open. Reaching down, he grabbed a heavy piece of metal and threw it. It landed with a loud clang in an open space between several crates. Two of the thugs rushed out of the shadows, thinking to ambush him. But they stood in confusion when they found only the wrench lying on the ground.

Wordlessly, Jack charged the men from behind. He rammed his elbow into the head of one of the men, and the bloke went sprawling. With a punch to the jaw, Jack knocked him out. That left the second chap. The thug raised his gun to fire, but Jack snatched up a piece of wood and flung it at him. The board smacked against the man’s forearm, throwing off his aim. As the shot went wild, Jack lunged.

He twisted the gun out of the bloke’s hand. As soon as the gun fell, he plowed his fist into the thug’s chest. As the man gasped, Jack grabbed his hair and rammed his head down onto Jack’s knee. Wasn’t a move he used often in the ring, being quick and not particularly showy, but he was after far more than prize money here. And he was fighting with only one hand, since he had to keep a good grip on the case full of money. The chap was out before he hit the ground.

Two blokes down. Got to get to Eva.

Ballard stepped into his path. “His lordship wants his blunt back.”

Jack stared at the younger version of himself. He may have been younger, but he was still as big as Jack, with arms as big around as pier pilings. There was experience in Ballard’s eyes, though he hadn’t yet seen the worst of life. Ballard still had the shine of possibility, as if he could face down whatever this world threw at him. Enough time with Rockley would change all that.

“Got the sound of Seven Dials in your voice,” Jack said. “That’s how Rockley likes it. Too poor to care that we’re being used.”

“If it ain’t me,” Ballard said, “it’ll be someone else.”

“Don’t make it right.”

The young bloke only shrugged. “Right don’t keep a roof over my head or pay for beer.”

“There’s more in the world than beer and keeping the rain out.” Jack didn’t know why he tried to talk to the chap, instead of simply laying into him. But he’d seen too many echoes of himself lately, too many roads he could’ve taken.

Eva’s influence. That words could mean as much as fists. What would she make of him now, trying to have a conversation with Ballard instead of just pummeling the bloke? Jack didn’t feel softer—he felt as sharp as ever, but with a more precise edge.

Ballard frowned. “Here now, don’t you go trying to confuse me. His lordship says to get the blunt back, and to kill you. And that’s what I aim to do.”

Without another word, Ballard attacked.

To hell with being nice.

They threw themselves at each other, trading punches. Ducking one of Ballard’s fists, Jack had to admit that the bloke knew his business. He’d trained, just as Jack had, his strength almost equal to his. Jack landed an upper cut, making Ballard’s head snap back, but the younger man came back quickly with a right hook that caught Jack square on the side of his jaw. His mind and vision fogged.

Carrying the case full of money hindered Jack, leaving him dependent on using just one hand to fight. But he had the use of both elbows, knees, and feet. He didn’t have a gentleman’s pretty rules about fighting. So after shaking his head to clear it, he countered Ballard’s attacks, kicking at the weakest points of the bloke’s body.

Ballard grabbed his collar, and threw him into a crate. The wood shattered around him. Thick splinters jabbed through his coat and into his back. Grimacing, Jack struggled to his feet. He could feel blood running down his skin as he leaped at Ballard. They locked together, grappling, careening from crate to piles of girders to stacks of lumber. All the while, they threw punches and rammed knees and elbows into each other, with Ballard fighting to get the case from Jack.

Jack swallowed a groan as Ballard slammed an elbow into his ribs. Something cracked, filling him with a red film of pain.

A damn good fighter, Ballard. Even the brawl with the bullies at Mrs. Arram’s hadn’t been this rough, and none of those blokes had held back.

If Jack could walk away from this fight, he’d consider it a damn miracle. But he had to keep going. He had to get to Eva. He shoved at Ballard, trying to break free.

A revolver barked. He turned just in time to see one of the other hired thugs fall to the ground, gripping his bleeding thigh. The gun he’d been holding now lay upon the ground. And standing over him, Webley in hand, was Eva. Jack saw it all in an instant: the thug had been drawing a bead on him while he fought with Ballard, and Eva had shot the bloke before he could pull the trigger.

She now picked up the thug’s dropped gun and stuck it in her handbag. From the sound of metal clanging on metal, she’d added the weapon to a growing collection.

Eva’s presence distracted Ballard long enough for Jack to land a punch right in the center of his face. Blood shot from the other man’s nose as the bone crunched beneath Jack’s fist. But the chap didn’t go down. He stayed standing and fought. If Jack wasn’t on the receiving end of Ballard’s punches, he’d be impressed by the bloke’s heart. No wonder Rockley had picked him out of all the other bruisers. Ballard took a lot of punishment, and dished out plenty of his own.

He should give the case to Eva, but that’d make her more of a target. He had to hang on to it. Drawing a breath, Jack steadied himself before launching into another round of blows. It was going to be a long fight.

* * *

Eva had never seen two men more determined to beat the hell out of each other. She’d witnessed Jack in some brutal fights before, but none of his opponents had been so much his equal. As he and Ballard continued to brawl, she had the mad notion that the whole of London would succumb to the ravages of time, collapsing around the two men as they fought.

If she tried to get in the middle of it, even to help, she’d only make Jack’s job that much more difficult. She’d be a liability.

Behind her, she heard the ping of Marco’s gun ricocheting off a metal plate, followed by someone returning gunfire. Was it Rockley? Another of his hired brutes? With the darkness heavy over the site, it was difficult to know who was where. Even an expert sniper like Simon would have trouble spotting his targets.

She whirled as heavy footfalls approached. There wasn’t time to reload or aim before one of the remaining thugs, running from Marco’s shots, plowed into her. She went sprawling, losing her gun and her handbag. Hell.

She just had time to clamber to her feet before the thug swung at her, and she ducked beneath the blow. They danced like this, as he threw punches and she evaded the hits. He had size, strength, and reach on her. Impossible for her to match him that way.

Light spilled on the ground behind the thug, cast by one of the lamps.

She waited. Until the precise moment when the thug threw another punch, and his equilibrium was off. Then she moved. She hiked up her skirts and kicked him in the chest. Unbalanced and propelled by the momentum of the kick, the thug stumbled backward, right into the pool of light.

There was the crack of a rifle. Her attacker jerked as a bullet hit his arm. He shouted in pain. The thug looked at her, then into the darkness where the shot originated from. Cursing, he ran off, vanishing into the night and leaving behind only spatters of blood upon the ground.

Eva couldn’t risk exposing herself, not when Rockley might still be lurking around the construction site, but she vowed that when she saw Simon later, she’d thank him for his expert marksmanship.

Picking up her gun, she spun back to help Jack and saw him standing over Ballard, splayed on the ground. The other man struggled to get to his hands and knees, but his limbs collapsed beneath him. Jack himself was covered in cuts and already darkening bruises, his coat torn, and blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. But he was alive. He still held the case of money.

Glancing up, he saw her. He took a step toward Eva. Then stopped when Rockley emerged from behind a crate with a pistol trained right at Jack’s head.

“My money,” he snapped. “Hand it over.”

Eva raised her gun.

“Get that thing on the ground and kick it toward me,” Rockley hissed over his shoulder at Eva, “or I’ll plant a bullet in his brain.”

She had no choice but to set her gun down and push it to Rockley with the toe of her boot. Leaving Jack wounded and vulnerable as he faced off against his greatest enemy.

* * *

Jack glared at Rockley, hate pumping through him. Leave it to the bastard to step in after his hired bruisers had softened Jack up.

“Hand over my money.”

Jack’s entire body was tense as iron. He was aware of Eva, watching him. He felt the weight of the case in his hand. It carried more than pound notes: a means for Miss Jones to rebuild her life, and some way to put Edith to rest.

But the gun pointed at his head had its own convincing argument.

Jack stepped forward quickly and swung the bag, slamming it into Rockley’s forearm. The gun flew from Rockley’s hand. Before the weapon even hit the ground, Jack wrapped his hand around Rockley’s throat.

Eyes bulging and face red, Rockley scrabbled at Jack’s fingers, trying to break his hold. But Jack kept his hand tight around the bastard’s neck. He lifted him up, so Rockley’s feet dangled.

“Feels good,” Jack growled. “Just a fragile bit of bone and flesh. So easily crushed.”

“Dalton, please.” Rockley could barely gather enough breath to wheeze. “Give you … anything.”

“Can you give me Edith? Can you give me back five years of my life?”

Rockley only stared at him with wild, terrified eyes, his hands clutching at Jack’s wrist.

“You’re scared,” Jack rumbled. Pure, clean hate burned through him. “Want to live. Feeling alone, desperate. This is what Edith felt. As she slowly died. And now you feel it, you son of a bitch. I want you to feel it. I want you to look at my face, and know who’s killing you and why.”

Softly, Eva said, “Jack.” Not a plea or a demand. Just the speaking of his name.

His hand still tight around Rockley’s neck, Jack lowered him to the ground.

“But I ain’t going to kill you,” Jack said. “Killing you’s too merciful. I want you to live. You’re going to suffer, Rockley. Every moment of every day. Edith’s at peace now, but you won’t have any. Never again.”

Jack uncurled his fingers from their grip on Rockley’s throat. He took a step back and watched the nobleman gag and cough like a chimney sweep.

He turned at Eva’s approach. She held a hand out to him. “Let’s go.”

Jack reached for her. Their fingers barely brushed, then impact jarred through him. Ballard’s heavy weight bore down on him. The bloke looked like raw meat, cut and bleeding, yet he was relentless, pinning Jack in the dirt, his arm across Jack’s throat.

“You and me ain’t done,” Ballard muttered.

Jack tried to plow his knee into Ballard, but the younger man twisted to avoid the blow. Jack continued to thrash, striving to get a hit in somewhere. Didn’t help that he was already battered and exhausted from their earlier brawl.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eva pull a revolver from her handbag.

Then the gun fell from her hand, clattering to the dirt, as Rockley grabbed her from behind. He wrapped one arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides. In his other hand, he held a long, thick nail, and pressed its tip against Eva’s neck.

She twisted, trying to break free, but he dug the sharp tip of the nail into her skin. A bead of red appeared.

Jack’s eyes clouded. He thought he’d been angry before.

“A little less fight,” Rockley spat. “That means you, too, Dalton.”

Fury tore through Jack. It burned along his veins, set fire to his muscles. Gave him strength beyond any he’d ever had. He grabbed Ballard’s wrist and shoved the man’s arm off his throat. He twisted Ballard’s entire arm. The man groaned as something in his limb snapped.

Jack pushed to standing, throwing Ballard off. Fist like a freight train, he rammed it into Ballard’s face. Bones crunched beneath Jack’s knuckles, and the hired muscle collapsed onto the ground. Black spatters of blood landed in the dirt. Ballard’s eyes rolled back. Though his chest moved, the rest of him didn’t.

Panting, steaming with hate and swaying on his feet, Jack faced Rockley. Eva held herself still beneath the sharp point of the nail, but she looked as angry as Jack felt. Marco and Simon had to be holding their fire, concerned that they might hit her.

Rockley glanced at Ballard’s prone form. “No wonder I hired you, Dalton. You were always the best at administering beatings.”

“Saved one for you.”

“I’ll decline your generous offer.” His gaze flicked to the case Jack held. “Let’s try this again. Hand me the money. And if you make the slightest move, the merest twitch, then I give this woman a new means of breathing.” He pressed the nail harder against Eva’s neck. She didn’t make a sound as more blood welled and dripped down beneath the collar of her dress.

It was all Jack could do to keep from launching himself at Rockley and tearing the bastard’s head clean off his body. But the long night had taken its toll on him. His legs felt so goddamn heavy. He wouldn’t be fast enough to reach Rockley before the son of a bitch stabbed Eva.

Moving stiffly, Jack closed the distance between him and Rockley. As he got nearer, he saw white lines of rage around Eva’s mouth.

“Slowly,” Rockley warned as Jack lifted his hand holding the case.

Jack did as Rockley commanded, moving at a drugged pace. Rockley snapped out his free hand and grabbed the case. Still holding on to Eva, he edged back, putting distance between them and Jack.

“Now you let her go,” Jack growled.

“I may as well put a gun in your hand if I do.” He glanced down at Eva. “She comes with me. The same terms apply. If you make a single move, or,” he added, raising his voice, “if your friends out there try to shoot me, then I stab her. Am I clear, gentlemen?”

There was a long silence before Marco’s and Simon’s voices came from out of the darkness. “Clear.”

Rockley started walking backward, taking Eva with him.

Enraged at his own helplessness, Jack could only watch as Rockley crept farther away, holding Eva.

“I’ll make you pay, Rockley,” Jack said through gritted teeth.

“No you won’t” was the answer.

Eva released her hold on Rockley’s arm. She speared her hand between her throat and the nail, pushing her palm against its tip. Blood dripped down her hand as she tried to shove Rockley’s arm away.

Jack leaped forward. He grabbed Rockley’s arm and pulled it back. As he did, she ducked out from Rockley’s grip.

Knowing she was safe, Jack launched himself at Rockley.

He and Rockley crashed into a stack of girders. Jack pinned him against the metal beams. As Rockley struggled, snarling and cursing, Jack pried the nail out of his hand.

Holding Rockley’s gaze with his own, Jack rammed the nail into the bastard’s chest.

Rockley’s eyes went round and wide. He stared down in disbelief at the nail sticking out between his ribs. Blood soaked the front of his elegant shirt. He dropped the case. Feebly, he clawed at the nail, trying to pry it from him, but blood made the metal slippery, and he couldn’t find a good grip.

Jack stepped back. He watched Rockley slide down the stack of girders, until the man sat on the ground with his legs sticking out like a doll. The case filled with money lay beside him.

“You can’t…” he gasped.

“I did,” Jack answered.

Rockley turned his glassy eyes to Eva, who came to stand beside Jack. “Please … as a woman … you must help…”

“As a woman,” she said, “I’m happy to watch you die. You won’t hurt any more of my sex. Ever again.”

“One final thing.” Jack strolled over to Rockley and crouched beside him. He reached into Rockley’s coat and pulled out the folio containing the documents. “All these? Forgeries. The real evidence is already in the government’s hands. Papers are going to be full of it tomorrow morning—your treason. I’m just sorry you won’t be around to see it.”

Rockley’s face turned even more chalky. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Look at me, Rockley,” Jack said. “I’m the last thing you’re ever going to see. Take the image of my face with you to Hell. I sent you there because of what you did to Edith. The moment you killed her, you killed yourself.”

Rockley gasped, shuddered, and then went still. His gaze became vacant. His chest stopped moving.

He was dead.

Slowly, Jack got to his feet. He stared down at Rockley’s lifeless body. The elegant nobleman sprawled in a pool of his own blood, his handsome face now waxy. Jack waited for the feeling of triumph. It didn’t come. All he felt was tired.

“Jack.” Eva took his hand, tugging him away. “The police will be coming.”

He turned from the body to look at Eva. The exhaustion wrapping around him disappeared. She was scratched, bloodied, beautiful. And alive.

All he wanted to do was wrap her in his arms and never let go. But the coppers’ whistles cut through the air.

He grabbed the case of money, took her hand, and together they ran into the night.

* * *

The back room at Ockham’s public house was filled with odd and broken debris: tables missing legs, chairs whose backs had broken off, half a poster advertising Greywell’s beer. Currently, it also held all the members of Nemesis, some of whom looked just as damaged as the furniture. Too tired to sit, Eva leaned against a wall, while the men arranged themselves throughout the cluttered room, talking in low voices.

A note had been sent to Miss Jones and her family, telling them to meet Nemesis here, rather than at headquarters. With Rockley’s mysterious death all over the morning papers, it was the safer option.

Those papers were now spread across several listing tables. NOBLEMAN’S TREACHERY! LORD ROCKLEY MEETS A BAD END AS BETRAYAL IS JUSTLY REWARDED.

Sunlight trickled through a high window as Harriet finished bandaging Jack’s back. Despite the fact that his wounds were more severe than Eva’s, he’d insisted that Eva be treated first. The cut at her throat wasn’t very deep and wanted only some cleaning and a salve. Her hand, however, bore a deep puncture, and was swaddled in bandages. It would be a few weeks before she’d have full use of her hand. But this was all inconsequential compared to the damage Jack had taken.

He sat on one of the backless chairs while Harriet made her last adjustments to his dressings. Gauze crisscrossed over his bare chest. He was bruised, battle weary—a warrior.

Jack had fought for her, been willing to do anything to keep her safe. Warmth centered in her chest and spread outward.

He caught her looking at him, but he didn’t smile. Just stared right back. She wanted to press her lips to his bandages. Feel the thrum of his pulse beneath her hand, and swallow his breath. The seconds kept creeping forward, toward a time when she’d no longer know the texture of his skin or hear the rough rumble of his voice. She had to gather close what she could while she still had time.

“If you rest and not push yourself overly hard,” Harriet cautioned him, “you’ll be healed within a few weeks.”

Jack grunted softly. “Don’t know what you mean by rest.”

“Familiarize yourself with the term.” Harriet patted him on his shoulder, missing the sharp glance Lazarus aimed at her.

Jack stood and was slipping his arms into the sleeves of his shirt when Miss Jones and her parents entered. The young woman and her mother took one look at a partially dressed Jack before they immediately turned their gazes to the floor.

“Perhaps we ought to come back a little later,” Mr. Jones suggested, red faced.

“Be done in a trice.” Jack quickly did up the buttons of his shirt, though his face tightened in pain from the effort. “There. Presentable as a sermon.”

It was still scandalous for a man to talk to anyone without a jacket, let alone tucking in his shirt, but they’d long moved past social niceties by this point.

“You’ve read the papers,” Eva said to Mr. Jones.

“So we have,” he answered, somber. “A very bad business.”

“Given the evidence of Lord Rockley’s treason,” Simon noted as he came forward, “there isn’t going to be much of an investigation into his death. Imagine you’re rather shocked by it all.”

“Glad, more like,” Miss Jones said with surprising vehemence. “But Lord Rockley’s fatality … did any of you…?” She glanced at Jack.

Before he could speak, Eva said, “Nemesis always protects its clients, even after the job is done. The less you know of the circumstances surrounding his demise, the better.”